Old Powder Man

by Joan Williams

  He went a half mile with weeds on either side and then several miles through woods where it seemed late evening. But he emerged to sunlight and barren cleared land. Borrow pits, he thought: the first he had ever seen. From them, dirt was “borrowed” to build the levee. His impression was of great activity: many mules, Negroes, wheelbarrows, wagons, and several tractors, a few white men. As hot as he was, he thought every man and mule out there looked a whole lot hotter.

  Following the road to its end, he was in the middle of the levee camp before he realized it. For some time, seeing a haze of blue smoke rising above the trees, he had wondered if there were a fire in the woods. Now, stopped, everywhere he looked he saw the same smoky blue look; wood smoke, the old familiar smell, drifted to him. He was surrounded by tents of the same design and would later learn their pattern, the same in every levee camp he was ever to enter. Supported by a pole in the center, the tents had a raised wooden floor; halfway up were green wooden walls, then screening to a canvas top of the same dark green; canvas flaps to cover the screening were rolled up when occupants were at home, kept down when they were not, to suffocate mosquitoes trapped inside. Son would have asked information from two towheaded children but they giggled and ran away. He passed a tent with a sign over the door reading Commissary, then went along a path between two rows of tents. Ahead he saw what was obviously the dining tent with a kitchen connected; the smoky look came partly from there. Behind it, on the fringes of camp, brush and garbage were being burned. He knew there were two sections of camp; clearly the dining tent was the dividing line. Beyond it, he saw only Negroes. A man was roasting something over a little fire of his own and many Negro women were boiling wash. There were always fires; the smoky blue hazy look was permanent, the first thing anyone noticed arriving in a levee camp. Son turned in surprise before reaching the dining tent as a Negro woman said from behind a screen, “Hep you?”

  The tent was connected to a similar one by a screened breezeway. He stopped and said, “I’m a dynamite man. I’m looking for Mister Will.”

  “He out to the job,” she said.

  “When does he get in?” Son said.

  “He be’s in about fo’,” she said.

  “Could I wait for him up yonder by the commissary? Is that where he comes?”

  “Yes suh.” She turned in answer to a query behind her and said, “It’s a white man say he’s a dynamite man looking for Mister Will.” She looked back at Son. “Miss Martha say come in and wait out of the heat.” Two wooden steps led up to the tent and as Son started toward them, the woman pushed open the door. Quicker than a whip’s lash, a black snake, uncurling from beneath the steps, threw itself at the door. “Hyar that snake!” the woman screamed. She pulled the door to sharply, knocking the snake to the ground. It disappeared beneath the tent as men who had been burning brush came running with shovels. The Negro woman said, “Gone again. You all get you some axle grease and come rub around this tent. I ain’t studying that snake no more.” As the men went off to obey, she opened the door and Son came up the steps. She said, “We been fighting that snake ever since the baby come. It’s the determinest.”

  Behind her a woman who had been watching said, “I’m Martha Carrothers. You must be the new dynamite man we’ve heard about.” She came forward, a capable-looking woman, her hair fashionably waved, much younger than Son would have expected. There was an air of serenity about her that made him know she was leading exactly the life she wanted to; she wore high heels, her nails were polished, and she surprised him. He had removed his hat and now they shook hands. “Yes mam,” he said. “Frank Wynn. Pleased to meet you.” His eyes had adjusted to the lesser light in the tent and he was surprised by that too; it was as if he had walked into a house in the city; on the floor was a thick rug and drawn close to a sofa with velvet throw pillows were deeply cushioned arm chairs. Brightly polished, a silver water pitcher and goblets sat on a heavy walnut sideboard the length of the tent. He would learn that people who lived in levee tents either all year or most of it usually furnished them so. In a small wicker bed he saw a baby about three months old. “Looks like you’re bringing out contractors mighty young these days,” he said, bending over the bed.

  Martha said, “We didn’t bring him. He was born here. Will went for the doctor but I couldn’t wait and Carrie here did as well.”

  Carrie said, “Miss Martha didn’t intend a doctor to deliver that baby. She knew it was almost here long befo’ she told Mr. Will.” Both women laughed. Carrie said, “Ever since we been boiling milk that snake been trying to get in after it.” The men had come back and she went to the screen to give directions. “Grease ever inch, all around, under the steps. No snake going to pass over no axle grease.” She called back into the tent, “They starting to come now. Mister Will be along directly.”

  Standing, hat in hand, watching men pass behind the tent, Son felt as if he were watching a parade when the flag passed; jocular but with evidence of tiredness in the slopes of their shoulders and slowness of steps, their speech barely audible, the Negroes came, sweating still. Some, so old their hair was white, had bodies comparable to the young men’s who, whether they were big men or not, gave the impression of it because of their strength. I wouldn’t want to mess with none of them anyway, Son thought. Some men looked up and nodded and spoke to Carrie who said, “Afternoon,” or “All right.” Their eyes, passing over the strange white man, went obediently blank. They were gone, their soft voices, the shuffle of their feet, the clink of things they carried fell away into distant sounds and the two silent women waited. Martha said, “Isn’t Will coming?”

  Carrie turned her eyes in neither direction but spoke with certainty: “No’m.”

  Son knew enough to know the Negroes had been too quiet and that now the women were; he felt prickly along his hairline, as if touched by cold fingers. Carrie’s eyes had been bright and clear before; but now she sat out on the breezeway and the whites looked bluish, the color of skimmed milk; she lowered her eyes, not to meet, even by chance, the white man’s; her lower lip protruded. She had the look another white woman besides Martha would have called sulky. Asked anything at all now, she would have denied knowledge of it, even the time of day. But, later, she would say she had known all along there was going to be trouble. That morning, waking, a dark shadow had leaped into her breast and she had had to battle it all day.

  Holding his hat tightly, Son said, “I’ll run up yonder and see can I find him.”

  Martha’s eyes met his. “Something’s happened,” she said. “He always come here directly.”

  He said again, “I’ll see can I find him,” and went out into an afternoon still hot, put on his hat and passed Carrie, who saw nothing. The women, separated now by more than rooms, dwelled on their necessarily different alliances: only to what lay in the bed were they the same, and both moved at the sound of a tiny sneeze.

  All the way back up the sloping path, Son wondered how he would know Will Carrothers; there were other white men in camp. Carter, Will’s cousin, managed the commissary; the head mechanic and greaser, the job foreman were always white. Coming toward him now was a man in grease-covered clothes, one of the tow-headed children on each foot squealing as he walked. “Evenin’,” the man said.

  “How do,” Son said.

  In a cleared place before the commissary, three white men stood talking. Overflowing the commissary porch, Negro men and women stood, waiting. One man towered above the others, silver-haired, straight, thin as a bamboo pole, and Son knew instinctively it was Will Carrothers. As Son came up, the man turned and said, “Yes sir?”

  Pushing back his hat, Son put out his hand. “I’m Frank Wynn, Mister Will, the new dynamite man in Delton for American Powder.”

  “Yes sir,” Will said, shaking hands.

  Son, not knowing anything else to do, came to the point. “I come out here to sell you some dynamite,” he said, his approach so direct, he and Will laughed. The other white men had stopped talking and shuffle
d their feet, waiting for Son to leave. Son said, “I’m going back to Marked Tree to look for a place to sleep. But I’d like to come out and see you first thing in the morning.”

  Will’s hand had seemed bone barely covered with skin but it was hard, calloused, sunburned. He leaned down to talk to the average man but did it in a kindly way. Son thought he must be about Mr. Ryder’s age; he spoke in the same gentle way, his voice seeming also to belong to an older man. But he ran the most successful levee camp on the river and Son knew he had his tough ways. He had always been too light to fight and had devised a way of clipping a rebellious Negro under the chin with one of his long legs; had knocked them clear off machinery and down levee banks that way. Will came from an old family, had graduated with honors from Georgia Tech, could have had an engineering job anywhere and had purposefully picked the river; Martha said it was as if he never had been to school. No matter their background almost all the levee men chose to talk much the way the Negroes did. Will said, “We usually put you peddling men up in camp. I got an equipment salesman over yonder in the guest tent. You’re welcome to stay there. Take some supper with us too.”

  “I’m much obliged,” Son said. Will turned immediately back to the others. As Son went to his car for his grip, a man came to the door of the guest tent and called, “Mister Will, Carter, anybody going to join me for a toddy before supper?”

  Will said, “Yes sir, we’ll be there directly. That’s Frank Wynn there. American Powder. Buzz Campbell, Mid-Valley Equipment.”

  Son went inside and shook hands with Buzz Campbell who stood in his undershorts shaking out the dustiest pair of pants Son had ever seen. He said, “Looks to me like you’ve been through a Oklahoma dust storm getting here.”

  Buzz said, “Hell, I rode a mule out here from town. I ain’t tearing up the bottom of my car getting out to these levee camps. But I’ll be glad to ride with you when you go back. I’ll give a boy a dollar to ride this mule back to town.” He took from his pockets his overnight things, toilet articles and a fifth of whisky and put them on a small washstand beneath a flecked mirror. He said, “When Carter goes back to the commissary we can get us some Cokes.”

  Son, changing clothes, looked at the men still talking, all the Negroes still waiting. He said, “Who are those other fellows; what’s going on?”

  “That there white-haired one is Cotton Riley, the head mechanic. The one starting to the commissary now is Carter Carrothers. Some of the niggers didn’t show up this morning and the others say they’ve run off to the Number Two job up the river aways. Charley Holt’s job. One of Mister Will’s boys arranged it and got them more pay.”

  “What’d he do that for?” Son said.

  “Charley Holt paid him to send him some help.”

  “Hell, I thought there was enough niggers in Arkansas to go around,” Son said.

  “Cotton picking ones. Not levee ones.” Buzz said. “And there’s a world of difference between the two. The levee ones don’t have nothing to do with the ones that’ll pick cotton, either. They don’t know who’s carrying the boys off and they’re worried sick about not getting the job done on time if any more leave.”

  When Carter went into the commissary, the Negroes crowded in. But most had left by the time Son and Buzz started there. They went out and the sun, perched like a ball on the farthest rim of trees, set as they watched. Its going cast shadows like dark paths to follow; the sun had long left the commissary and, going inside, they felt the day’s first cool. Opposite the front door was a back one with a large desk in front of it and all around the room were shelves full of foodstuff. Shelves and counters were made in sections, to be folded when camp moved; then, everything went on barges—mules, people, tents, all the equipment used in building the levee. Explaining, Buzz said it was a sight to see. All that stuff floating down the river. Twenty times worse than moving a circus. Last February, he said, I was here when they brought in all this stuff and it was cold. Cold! The river bank here was revetted and so sloping they couldn’t get the barges close enough. There was water between the barge and the bank. They threw off the bales of hay that fenced in the mules, for them to walk over. Talk about having to whup mules! Them were the worse damn mules in America. I thought they’d never get them off that barge. And they couldn’t get the niggers to do nothing either. They were a dragging with the cold. Cotton said he’d get ’em started working, give him some whisky. Mister Will give him the only bottle he had at the time and Cotton got those boys in a huddle and got that bottle started around, drinking with them. They just had a couple of sips, just enough to warm ’em up and get ’em to feeling good. Then those boys got that gangplank to going, up and down, up and down, what we call the old roustabout shuffle. Tippety-tap, rippety-rap. I can hear it now, Buzz said.

  Carter was standing behind the commissary’s counter waiting on a Negro woman. She said, “How much your side meat?”

  Carter said, “Three cents a pound.”

  “I’ll take three pounds,” she said.

  “Anything else,” he said.

  “No suh.”

  Carter brought the meat, wrapped it and wrote out a ticket. The woman looked at it and said, “I’ll take a quart of molasses.”

  “You going to want anything else?” Carter said.

  “No suh,” she said.

  Carter brought the molasses and wrote another ticket with a new total. The woman looked at it then said, “I’ll take five pounds of sugar.”

  “I could have put all this on one ticket, you know,” Carter said.

  “No suh, I never thought of that, Boss,” she said.

  “Now you want anything else?” he said.

  “No suh,” she said. She took the packages and the ticket with a new total and gave him the money. When she had gone, Carter laughed. “She does that to me every week. She knows how much money she’s got to spend but she don’t know how to add and she don’t want me to know it.”

  When Son had been introduced, they talked of Charley Holt. “What’s Mister Will going to do to him?” Son said.

  “Nothing. He’s too mean to fool with,” Carter said. “Him and his wife both just as soon kill you as look at you; both of them have killed Negroes. He was the one got drunk one Saturday night and got bounced out of that showboat at Blytheville and come back with some of his Negroes early that Sunday morning, soaked it with gasoline and burned it down. Everybody knew he did it. The construction company he worked for paid the showboat owner fifty thousand dollars Monday morning.”

  “Your good boys don’t run off anyway, do they?” Buzz said.

  “No, the good ones been with us since we been on the river,” Carter said. He explained to Son, “During the winter lay-off, they scatter. Go to De-troit, Chicago, New Orleans, all over. But when Will gets ready to start work in the spring, he sends word and it gets carried and here they come from all over the country. They like levee life as much as we do. Camp’s a good place to hide out from the law, for white and colored. We just want to know who’s carrying them boys off.” Son and Buzz bought Cokes. Carter was beginning to close up but said, “Here comes Cotton’s wife.”

  Carrying the youngest of their eight children, Mrs. Riley came in, her hair as white as Cotton’s. “What you got good I can fix for supper, Mr. Carrothers?” she said.

  “Got some pork chops,” Carter said. “Some tender greens.”

  Mrs. Riley shifted the baby to her other hip. “No, I don’t believe so today.”

  “Pot roast,” Carter said.

  “Too late to start a roast, I reckon,” she said.

  “Chicken?” Carter said. “Nice fryers. Fresh garden peas.”

  Mrs. Riley sighed. “I reckon it’s too late to start anything,” she said. “Just gimme three pounds of baloney and two loaves of bread and eight sticks of this here candy.”

  When she had gone, Carter said, “I don’t know why Cotton puts up with that. She waits to the last minute every day to shop so she can say it’s too late to cook.” A
Negro at the screen door said, “You closed, Mr. Carter?”