Old Powder Man

by Joan Williams

  His son said, “The Ohio’s still rising, Pap. All the lowlands have been evacuated. They say it’s ghost towns everywhere.”

  It’ll be one here, Samuel thought, watching them, still going. He saw those driving cattle had trouble; the cattle walked blindly, heads lowered into the wind; ice hung like beards on their faces and froze on their eyelashes. All to save Cairo, he thought, always the city folks.

  “Hyar!” was a cry that came repeatedly from the road. Men on horseback, walking, drove the cattle; dogs ran barking at their hooves; the goal was to get over the secondline levee, into safety. The son blew on cold hands and said, “They been packed up since the first warning. We got a lot to do, Pap.”

  “I ain’t going,” he said.

  Out of the line of cars passing, a small coupe turned and came up the driveway. That’s why he was in the cold, the son thought. Samuel stood, held open the front door, as the men got out of the car, filed across the porch and came inside. This time he turned on lights, held his hands an instant over the globe for warmth, casting shadows. This time they were warmly and neatly dressed, not straggly looking at all, he thought.

  A man named Chess said, “We figure to blow the frontline levee. If we let water into that strip between it and the secondline, maybe it’ll lower the river enough; maybe they won’t flood in here too.”

  “What about the folks on that strip, and the cattle pushed into there? Some of the folks out of here are there too,” the son said.

  Chess said, “They can climb the secondline levee back into here, stead of us doing it the other way round.”

  “They ain’t going to just let you do it,” Samuel said.

  “We’re going by dark, can blast once so they can start getting out before we blast again,” another man said.

  “Cattle might drown but cattle left behind’s going to drown in here,” a third man said.

  “We got room in the car for one,” Chess said. He left the statement in the air; the old man and his son would have to decide.

  Samuel said, “Aggie’s waiting supper on you. I’ve had mine.”

  The son said, “Pap, you ain’t got any business …”

  Samuel said, “It’s my business if it’s my land.” He dressed warmly. They went out on the porch, having waited. It was full dark. The snow had stopped but the wind remained as cold as death. Beneath the cold pale moon the car, trees, housetops stood out covered with sleet. A moment, the car left exhaust hanging in the air like a ghost’s vapor, then was gone. Samuel had said, “Have a good supper, boy,” and the son had watched until the car was out of sight, then drove home. He knew Aggie and the boys were waiting supper as certainly as he knew that tomorrow he was taking them out of the floodway, as certainly as he knew something in the dark night would keep Pap, the others from flooding out folks of their own kind.

  In the morning, Samuel told what it was. He had come to the conclusion, he said, there was a lot of things bigger than you. One thing was God and another was the night itself. Then, he said, there’s the United States Gov’ment, the Mississippi River and the whole blasted National Guard from Missouri patrolling its banks!

  It was Sunday, and they packed. The three grandsons said there was nothing they could take. The daughter-in-law, Aggie, said, “We got to pack food, clothes, and feed; there’s not room for baseballs and mitts.”

  “Can’t we play ball when spring comes?” the youngest said.

  “Why, sugar,” she said. Looking into his eight-year-old face, she saw he did not understand at all. “We’ll be back ’way fore spring.”

  “I didn’t think anything would be here,” he said.

  “I think the house’ll be; that old tool shed upside the barn won’t. We don’t know what will and what won’t, is the truth of it,” Aggie said. “Besides mud.” She looked around at the house she had kept clean twenty years thinking she might as well have been off gallivanting. She tightened windows as if it were going to rain. They had taken everything they could in boxes to the attic. The truck was loaded; a trailer attached to the car was piled high with corn. The car was full, the windows up, the cat inside. Shep barked, herding cattle and pigs. Aggie sighed. “We’ve got everything,” she said, “except Pap.”

  All morning, as they packed, people from back in the floodway stopped to ask where he was. “He won’t go,” she or the son said; the people went on, nodding, as if it were right. Wagons, trucks, cars passed, many with crates of chickens tied on. Freezing rain fell and again everything was white. The road was slick; cattle, mules, horses stumbled slipped slid were fearful and balky picking a path. Everywhere dogs ran, barking. For a moment, Aggie opened the car window; the cat, terrified, escaped. The youngest cried out. “We can’t go back for it; we can’t,” she said. They saw it, its fur electrified-looking, running with humped back toward their barn. “If it stays in the loft, it might be safe,” she said.

  The son drove the truck; the other two boys were on horseback, driving cattle. It was a good thing cars had to crawl, Aggie thought, or somebody would slip off the road. They passed the cemetery and she looked toward the house. Pap must be watching, she thought. The boy said, “Suppose Grandpap don’t come.”

  “He has to,” she said.

  “He says he ain’t,” he said.

  “All I know is they got them Engineers on the levee, and we wouldn’t have gone unless we knew they’d make Pap leave.” But how? she wondered.

  “I bet he don’t leave because the Engineers want him to,” the boy said. Cattle plodded beside them with bent heads; men walked, carrying tow sacks on their backs with pigs inside. Aggie predicted those in the open would take sick. By night, flu that would turn into an epidemic had begun.

  At the levee people stood pushing over dogs, driving over cattle. All week, they had come pushing animals into safety; now they would find them, thin, hopelessly cold. In lost hungry packs dogs had run about until the woman at the general store fed them. Now, many were reclaimed. By the time people went back over the levee, not a stray would be left.

  In the floodway, only Samuel was left. The son had argued all he could, then said he was taking his family out and would come back and get him. “I ain’t going,” Samuel had said.

  In five states schoolhouses were filled with refugees. People were camped in empty box cars and on cotton weighing stations, with blankets strung around the sides. The son had brought a tent but the first night Aggie and the boys would sleep in the truck. The youngest wanted to go back with him; at the last minute the son said he could. Going against the exodus was hard going. It was late when they got back. On the way they heard the news. Walking in, the son said first thing, “Pap! water’s lapping over the roadway of the Southern-Illinois.”

  “That high?” Samuel said.

  When the Mississippi worked its way under a levee and bubbled to the surface the leaks were called sand boils. Early, the gaps had to be circled with sandbags or the levee was eaten away deep in its bowels. Men patrolled the levee looking for leaks; more were sent to wall them in when they were found. A thousand men had built a three-foot bulkhead atop the sixty-foot seawall at Cairo. But the Ohio had risen to fifty-nine feet. In Delton, Engineers told the Cairo office on Tuesday to wait for relief. On Saturday the plane flew over. On Sunday the Delton office sent word the levee would be blown on Monday. “Who’s going to do it?” they said in Cairo. “Nobody here will try again?”

  At eight o’clock that Sunday night Son’s phone rang; how much dynamite did he have in his magazine? an Engineer asked. Son told and the Engineer said could he get more? Son said he could get all he wanted directly out of Illinois. Could he leave for Cairo by ten? The National Guard would drive him, the Engineer said.

  What the hell’s it all about? Son said.

  The Engineer told everything except about the straggly line of farmers. He only said the trip was secret and Son had to go by night. Would his wife keep quiet? Son said he guessed she could keep quiet about that much, thinking, mainly because she won
’t think it’s worth telling. They hung up, but the phone rang again and the same Engineer said, Mr. Wynn, be sure you put on some warm clothes.

  I always do, Son said.

  This time put on more, the man said, hanging up again.

  When he told Mr. Ryder, Son laughed: You reckon he don’t think we read the newspaper, don’t know anything about those farmers? He said put all the dynamite in the magazine in the truck; the National Guard would escort it; he told the intersection where they would meet. The man says there’ll be two trucks, one to go ahead, one behind.

  It’s that bad? Mr. Ryder said.

  I reckon they want to kill the fellow bringing the dynamite as much as they want to kill the one going to shoot it off, Son said. But the fellow said not to worry; the boys got guns. You reckon there’s anything else you need to know?

  No sir, Mr. Ryder said.

  Son said he’d see him in Cairo then.

  There were two wide streets to the city, deserted now and slick with ice. It was almost dawn but there was little discernible change from the dark night hours during which freezing rain had fallen, turning the countryside white. Wary, Son looked out. But there was nothing to see except the sad, ineffectual light of the street lamps still burning and empty stores. A darkened marquee read, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Son said he had seen it the other night. Had anyone else? No one had. They were silent as they had been for most of the trip, hearing only their own sound, the splat splat splat of tires on slick wet pavement, until they came to the river. A barge was waiting at the base of the bridge, less visible from the opposite bank: the Mark Twain. Son made out the tarnished brass letters as he slipped down the bank of mud, mush and old snow. “What’s all that?” he said. Below the bridge he saw lamps glimmer and fires. “Folks that come out of the floodway today, camped,” the barge captain said.

  It was colder on the river. They crossed hearing the thumping engine and the bow splatting against the choppy water. Above the bridge, on the levee itself, the Engineers were camped. On the road leading to the bridge, between the two camps, the others waited. The barge captain told him, They’ve got all kinds of rifles and shotguns. That’s why we brung you by the water.

  Son was in his own tent and it was not much warmer; but he could change his socks; he put his feet back into wet boots and said, “How’d they know when we were coming?”

  The Colonel had been sent from Washington to oversee blowing of the fuse plug levee at the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway; he said, “They don’t. There’s just been one bunch or another patrolling ever since the first man was going to shoot the dynamite and they kept him from it. Yesterday, they even tried to blast the frontline levee. We figure they won’t come all the way to Delton to kill you.”

  “If you get me back?” Son said. “And my truck and my driver too.”

  “That’s right,” the Colonel said.

  “How you figuring on getting the truck out on the levee?” Son said.

  “Outnumbering them,” the Colonel said. “We got Guardsmen two and three deep lining the road where it’s coming, with machine guns and orders to use them.”

  Then it was later, though still not daylight; even with machine guns, they would not have risked daylight. Son, from the higher vantage point of the levee, saw about as much as those lining the road, saw the tops of the two National Guard trucks racing through the near dawn, the red dynamite truck between, and heard later how when the shotguns were raised the machine guns were raised opposite; then, he supposed, they only stood as he had watching the almost gold-looking warning lights of the dynamite truck bobbing as it tore along the top of the levee itself. He said, “The dynamite’s here, let’s get to work.”

  “We can’t,” the Colonel said. “There’s an old man still out in the floodway.”

  Son could not leave the Engineers camp. The Colonel told him how it went: he used every argument he could think of. Mr. Beggs, he said, there’s water standing in the business district of Louisville, eleven feet in a hotel lobby in Paducah. People everywhere have had to leave home.

  I ain’t going, the old man said.

  The Government had paid him for his land; he had known they had the right, might some day flood it, the Colonel said. The old man said he never thought they would. I even told him about you, the Colonel said, told him you were waiting, had come all the way from Delton, weren’t about to go home without blowing the levee. What’d he say? Son said. What do you think? The Colonel said. His son was there and a grandson, a little tow-headed fellow who said, Why won’t you go, Grandpap?

  There won’t be nothing to come home to, Samuel said.

  I said he’d have more to come home to now than if he let the river keep rising, the Colonel said. His house and barn might be left, even his gravestones across the road.

  Shoot, the old man said, you could knock some of them over with a feather right now, they’re so old.

  His son said, Pap, it don’t matter about the gravestones; you’ve got to go.

  The little fellow said, Anyway, Grandma’d still be in the ground.

  That’s so, the old man said.

  It seemed he hadn’t thought of that. After awhile, he said he would go. But he was going in his own way. But how …? I said, after being shoved toward the door by the son who answered, Because he said he would.

  Next, Son told how all that time they had stood on the levee watching and how those camped below the bridge had stood watching too. First, they had seen the Colonel’s little khaki-colored car come shooting along the road like the floodway was opening up behind him, Son said, laughing. Next they saw the coupe with the man and boy in it alone; they had craned their necks to see. Then the Colonel arrived and told them and they kept watching. It didn’t take as long as he expected, Son thought, even though the roads were slippy and the sleet slanted toward them. The old man wore a wide hat and kept his head lowered. As he came closer, Son saw the brim filled with sleet and occasionally spilled over onto the horse’s neck.

  It was a long cold trip and a long cold time everyone waited. When the old man was safe, Son set up the dynamite. It was late afternoon when the blast came. He was told later windows in the newspaper office in Cairo rattled; a farmer’s wife, having a long delivery, told reporters it made her push and at last, a son was born. Window shades, everywhere, flew to the ceiling. But what Son never forgot was the sound of the first great swoosh as the water broke. Through two gaps and thirteen natural breaks it went, racing over the land, carrying livestock and farm buildings as if they were toys floated by children, flooding more than a hundred thousand acres. For days everyone had watched the two rivers of raging muddy water and now it seemed as if the whole world were only that, except for the levee where they stood and the little strip of land behind it where the floodway people were camped. All they could do now was go back there, Son thought.

  The next morning, the water was calmer, lay like a great muddy lake, full of floating objects. One Engineer retrieved a trunk and found the clothes in it still to be dry. Son saw a hen floating on a nest; reaching land, the hen flew away and the nest full of eggs went on alone. All day they watched fowl flying from one object to another to reach dry land; they could see dogs stranded on the tops of houses and barns. That afternoon, the first people rowed out. It was late when Son saw a man rowing back in, with a cow. Cattle were found safe in lofts. Daily, people had to row out to feed and water them. It would be three weeks in all. By Thursday, sure no more blasting would be needed, the Engineers allowed Son to leave. Mr. Ryder had already gone, with an escort all the way. Son was taken the same way, by night, by barge, driven home in the same guarded car. Again gazing out at the wide dark streets of the city, he noted the picture show had changed. A whole lot had changed for those folks, he thought. He would remember always the old man coming out of the spillway and the old Negro who approached the levee guards with a question, pulling a large child’s wagon; like a corpse, something humped was in it covered by a clean white cloth. The Colonel was
summoned; he had killed four hogs, the Negro said; in his camp someone would steal the meat; could he leave it on the levee, come out and salt it down every day? The Colonel could not say no; it was the old man’s meat for a long time to come; only he, except for those connected to the project and a few reporters came on the levee at all. About Cairo, Son had the same indefinable feeling of contribution toward something he could not name he had had when he shipped the dynamite to New Orleans and farmers there were flooded, long ago.

  As bad as things had been when the water was high, he heard they were worse when it lowered and the thaw came. People, going back to the floodway after three weeks, drove ahead cattle through mud that reached the animals’ chests. Some people had nothing to return to and went elsewhere, bitter. Everyone was bitter. He heard from the Colonel men hung around the levee road for days before they would believe the dynamite man was gone. They swore he better never show up around there again and Son knew he never would. The Colonel said he had gone to see the old man once. Several of the gravestones had been knocked down, broken and chipped, but the old man had repaired them; despite his family’s protests, he was on the roof hammering and nailing, patching and painting; from there he could see the levee and on brightest days a sparkle, faint and quick, brief as a mirror’s flash. It was the blew hole where the greatest force of the blast had come, through which the water had first rushed. It was great and round and deep. Water never left it.

  At first, no one went near. Then little boys and Negroes crept there. Old people went next who usually held their grudges but the spring and summer days were long and there was little to do. Word spread. Finally everyone went except Samuel; he never did, never had cared about fishing anyway and the blew hole had the finest fishing anywhere. Always would, Son said.