The Handsome Road

by Gwen Bristow

  Fred scrambled down the slope and grabbed a sandbag from the pile a man was unloading near the foot of the levee. The thing was heavy, a lot heavier than he’d thought. It was hard dragging it up the slope. But when he got it to the top and stood to catch his breath the foreman looked up sharply. “Well, what you waiting for? Bring some more.”

  Fred obediently trudged down. He knew enough to jump when a foreman spoke. But these things were mighty heavy. By the time he had brought up five or six of them the bags were so heavy he could hardly move them at all. He had walked miles that day and he’d been tired before he started to work. He observed that it was getting dark. He tugged and panted, digging his bare feet into the earth as he went. But even when it got black dark nobody seemed to be stopping. A bonfire flared near the sandbag line. Further along he could see other fires. In their light he saw the men still working. He got down to the bottom of the levee again and looked at the helter-skelter pile of sandbags. In the fitful light they looked enormous. “Well, take ’em up,” said the wagon-driver.

  Fred tugged at another. The slope that had looked so gentle by daylight seemed nearly perpendicular now and miles high. He closed his hands on the edge of the bag and felt his toes spreading and gripping at the grass as he strained.

  “Coffee, boy?” said a woman’s voice by him.

  By the light of the bonfires he saw a rawboned woman in a dingy gingham apron. “Time for the coffee bucket,” she said amiably. As he let go the sandbag she put a tin cup into his aching fingers, and taking the lid off a big bucket she carried she poured the cup full of coffee black as river mud. The steam rose up with an exquisite smell.

  Fred sat down on the grass. “Thank you, lady.”

  “Sugar?” she inquired competently, holding out a piece of newspaper crumpled into a sort of cup. “Just dip in.”

  He dipped his fingers into the pile of sugar and dropped it into the coffee. “Gee, this sho is good,” he sighed.

  She raised her voice. “Mrs. Lyman! Oh, Mrs. Lyman! Man over here!”

  A gray, humped-over woman appeared out of the shadows, lugging a bucket in which were greens and fat pork. She gave Fred a plate and tin spoon and helped him generously. “Mighty fine of you men to work so steady,” she told him as he began to gobble. In spite of his weariness Fred smiled proudly at hearing himself called a man twice in three minutes.

  It was the best supper he had ever had. Even when there were times at home when there hadn’t been enough to eat, he didn’t believe he’d been as hungry as this.

  “You done with that plate?” Mrs. Lyman inquired as he scraped up the last mouthful. “Well, give it here and I’ll take it on to the next one.”

  She went off into the dark. Fred got to his feet, thinking how wonderful good hot food was. Now he could drag up that sandbag with no trouble at all. As he took it up he could see several dozen women, evidently the wives, mothers and daughters of the men on the gang, bringing buckets of food and coffee from the cabins in the fields. By the eagerness with which they urged the men to eat all they wanted and keep their strength, one could tell they dreaded the river with knowledge as sure as that of the men working to hold it back. Fred noticed that the men didn’t loll around after eating, like those who loaded boats on the wharfs. These fellows lived in the cabins under the levee and it was their land the river threatened. They were working for a lot more than their wages.

  “How’re you getting on?” a friendly voice inquired at his elbow.

  It was Mr. Vance. Fred could see that his whiskered cheeks were smeared with mud and his eyes were red-rimmed with weariness, but his smile was kind. Fred smiled back at him gratefully.

  “Oh, I’m getting on fine, sir,” he said as stoutly as he could.

  “You better catch a little sleep,” Mr. Vance suggested.

  “Yes sir,” said Fred, ashamed of how much he wanted it. “Where do I go?”

  “I’ll show you. I’m about to catch a little myself.”

  Fred followed him down the levee. At its base the tramping of men and mules had churned the earth to a gluey mud. They trudged to one of the nearby tents. Mr. Vance raised the flap, and Fred made out the dim outlines of men rolled up on pallets. They all seemed to be fast asleep.

  “Where do I lie down?” he asked.

  “Anywhere you can find room,” Mr. Vance said. He smiled a little. “Pretty good job you’re doing.”

  Fred beamed with delight, but before he could answer, Mr. Vance was gone into the dark to find his own sleeping-place. Fred felt cautiously along with his muddy foot till he found an empty spot. He tumbled down into it and went to sleep.

  When he heard the men getting up, the inside of the tent was still dim, but a shaft of daybreak came through the flap. Nobody said very much to him. The men didn’t talk much at all. They just mumbled wearily that the river sure was acting up, and they hoped it wouldn’t rain. But outside the same pleasant ladies who had been on hand last night were going about with coffee and cornbread. Later on Fred saw them working the fields, helped by their children. Though the work he was doing was harder than any he had ever attempted before, Fred was glad he could help such nice folks.

  The work got harder as the water rose. The laborers seemed scarcely to stop at all. They worked as Fred had never seen men work before. Three times a day the women brought food and coffee from the cabins. They brought out the buckets through the sun or the rain or the dark or whatever there happened to be, and the men ate, leaning against the scoops and wheelbarrows, and then went back to work.

  They piled sandbags on the levee crown for a mile, thousands of sandbags heaped against the board fence. The women dug earth from their fields and brought it to the levee in wheelbarrows. The giant scoops worked steadily, drawn by mules too tired to give any but the feeblest responses to the lashes of their equally tired drivers. Sometimes the rain pelted them, sometimes the sun shone. The rain softened the levee and the mud clung to their shoes till their feet were heavy lumps that had to be dragged about. Most of the men took off their shoes and threw them into the fields, working barefoot.

  Fred lost track of day and night and the passage of time. At night the men built bonfires to give light, but if it rained the fires went out and they worked blindly in the dark. When they were too tired to go on they stumbled into the tents, or sometimes dropped down where they were on the damp levee and went to sleep, waking up and swearing when those who were still working stepped on them, and going back to sleep again. The water crept up, inch by inch. Every morning they could see it was nearer the top of the sandbag line than it had been the day before.

  In front of the levee the current gradually carried away the batture and the side of the borrow pit, and was eating under the crown. The men tried packing sandbags in the water to hold up the inner side of the levee, but the bags were wasted, for the river tore them away and carried them downstream. When the sandbags didn’t come fast enough some of the men brought their own cottonbales and tried to bolster up the levee with those. Mr. Vance said to Fred that cottonbales didn’t do much good, but the sight of them standing solidly there made the men feel better, so it was all right.

  Meanwhile the women corralled the cattle in groups at the foot of the levee, to be driven to the top if there should be a crevasse. The foremen would not allow the animals on the levee yet, for they would impede the work. In the two-story houses everything had already been moved upstairs. Negroes from the littlest cabins brought their family Bibles or their cherished pieces of store furniture to the homes of white persons who were fortunate enough to have two stories, and they prayed that if there should be a crevasse the water would not rise that high. Children climbed the trees and hung bunches of carrots and radishes in the upper branches, hoping they could reach them if the levee broke. Little girls hung their dolls there too, and little boys their pet toys, till it looked like a travesty of Christmas.

  The women and
children had to take care of the property, for Mr. Vance could not spare any men from the levee work. The wife of one of the workmen came to the levee and clung to Mr. Vance’s arm till he had to listen to her; she pled that her husband be spared long enough to climb a tree and tie up the bundle of clothes she had made for the baby who was coming. Mr. Vance let the man go. It was the only concession he made to any of them.

  Those who had boats tied them to the front steps to be ready for rowing to the levee if the water came through. They packed provisions and put them into the boats.

  But in the intervals between cooking for the gang and putting their possessions into the safest places, the women and children went on with their normal lives with a surprising quietness. They hoed the fields and fed the cattle. The women sewed on their front steps and the children played in the road. The levee might not break. They had seen high water before, and the levee had held.

  Fred carried sandbags till his shoulders ached and his arms were nearly numb. He built bonfires and worked by them at night, and when it rained he worked just the same. He ate when he had a chance, standing up or squatting on the levee while some woman dished up greens and pork for him. He had to eat hurriedly and pass the plate on to someone else. Sometimes he held cornbread in one hand, munching while he dragged braces up the slope. He slept when he had to, in a tent or lying on the ground; then he got up and worked again, fighting the river with a fury he had never known was possible.

  He had forgot this was a job to help ma. He did not stop to remember he was earning ten cents an hour. This was a battle he was fighting for its own sake, fighting so that cruel, snarling river would have to stay where it belonged. They would keep the flood back. They would make the levee strong enough if they killed all the mules and half the men. But they’d beat that river.

  One day Mr. Vance met him while he was dragging up a sandbag.

  “Try making out like you’re a mule and drag it behind you,” Mr. Vance suggested. “Sometimes that eases your shoulders.”

  “Yes sir,” said Fred. He liked Mr. Vance. It was only occasionally that Mr. Vance had time to stop and say anything personal to him, but when he did he was always mighty friendly.

  “Wait a minute,” said Mr. Vance. “Here comes a lady with some coffee.”

  Fred paused as the wife of one of the workmen approached with a bucket and a newspaper package of sugar. A dozen men clustered around waiting for the chance to dip in their cups. Mr. Vance filled his own, took some sugar from the paper with three muddy fingers and passed the cup to Fred. “Here, son. You fellows wait a minute—this kid’s littler than you.”

  “Thank you sir,” said Fred. He gulped the coffee down. It was good and hot. Mr. Vance, drinking coffee too, grinned at him. Mr. Vance’s clothes were so muddy their original color was hidden, and he had not shaved in so long that his face looked like a big cockleburr.

  “That sure is a help, ma’am,” Mr. Vance was saying to the coffee-bearer. “Mighty fine of you ladies to help us so much.”

  “No trouble at all, sir, pleasure,” she assured him, and Fred could tell by the heartiness of her answer that the ladies hereabouts liked Mr. Vance too. “When I bring the victuals for supper, you want me to bring ’em here or further down?”

  “Here. The fellows at that end are going to get fed tonight by Mrs. Lyman and her bunch.” He scrambled to his feet. “Well, son,” he said to Fred, “I guess we’d better be getting back to work. Tired?”

  “Oh no sir,” Fred returned sturdily. “I ain’t tired.”

  Mr. Vance smiled. “Well, try dragging ’em up from behind anyway. It’s kind of awkward but sometimes it rests you.”

  Fred began to climb again, pulling the sandbag behind him according to suggestion. He wished Mr. Vance had more time to talk to him. It was a fine job, being boss of a levee gang; maybe when the flood crest was passed and Mr. Vance had leisure to talk, he would explain how a man worked up to a good job like that.

  The men whose turn it had been to stop for coffee were going back to work. Mr. Vance was yelling at the driver of a mule-team. Fred listened with respect. Mr. Vance knew more bad words than any other man he’d ever heard. At the top of the levee Fred scowled at the tearing river. It had nearly reached the top of the sandbag line. Trees ripped from the banks farther up still came down on the current, knocking against the levee as if they too were now part of the river and shared its greed. Fred dropped his sandbag by the pile from which the men were bolstering the wooden braces and started down again. The sun was moving across the river, which meant that pretty soon it would be time for supper. He heard Mr. Vance shouting at the men.

  “Tell that woman she can’t bring those cows up here! Leave ’em at the base, lady. Hey, Fred! Fred Upjohn!”

  “Yes sir?” Fred ran over to him.

  “They’re driving some more braces down yonder. You’d better bring up a few of those.”

  “Yes sir.” Fred paused a moment and glanced across the sandbags at the river. “Er—Mr. Vance, is the river gonta get much higher?”

  “Hope not, son.” But Mr. Vance’s face was grim. “Pretty tough flood, ain’t it?”

  “It sho is,” Fred agreed. “Does it often get like this?”

  Mr. Vance shook his head. “Highest I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been on the river twenty years. Must be damn near two million second feet going by.”

  “Second feet? What’s them?”

  “Cubic feet of water per second. You better start bringing up those braces.”

  “Yes sir. I didn’t mean to be loafing.” Fred ran down the levee.

  The laborers fixing the braces in place were working with a slow, dogged rhythm. Fred wondered if they were as tired as he was. He was so tired he forgot how long he had been here, and it didn’t seem to him he had had any sleep at all to speak of. Dropping down like that when you were so tired you couldn’t walk any more didn’t seem to rest a fellow. You got stepped on and it rained on you. If it rained any more he figured they would all feel like just giving up. The rain got into the men’s eyes and gave them colds. Now and then a man had to be sent off the job with chills and fever after working in the rain.

  But he didn’t. He was tough. Didn’t anything make him sick. He was going to hold out till the flood crest went by. The ladies had promised after the crest went by and the men could quit working they would give the gang a big dinner with pork and chicken, for saving the levee. And then the government would send down some engineers from Washington to build an entirely new levee to replace this worn-out one. It sure would be fine to have a big dinner at a table, but that wouldn’t be the reason why they would all feel so proud. They would be proud because they had beat the river. Lordy mercy, what a river it was! Fred was so tired he hurt all over, but he wouldn’t stop. He’d beat that river if it killed him dead.

  The men told him to get some boards. Then they sent him for loads of nails and more sandbags. Fred’s feet were all sore and scratched and he could feel sweat running down his face and inside his clothes. Above the shouts of the men he could hear the river rushing past. That was strange. Usually the Mississippi crept down with perfect silence. Its noise now had a wicked triumphant sound. Climbing up and down Fred found that he was beginning to pray.

  “Oh Lord, please don’t let the levee break. Please don’t let it break, Lord. We’re doing the best we can. We’ll work all day and all night and not mind if you won’t let the levee break. Please don’t let it break, Lord. If you’ll let us hold the levee I’ll go to Sunday School every single Sunday and not mind having no shoes and learn my Bible verses and not shoot no craps as long as I live. Please Lord, let us hold the levee. We honestly been doing the best we could. Please let us hold the levee. Please don’t let it break. Please, Lord, please. …”

  There was a shiver under his feet and a rumble deep down in the earth and under the rumble was a sucking noise. The sandbag line quivered.
From the men on the levee went up a yell that was like no human noise Fred had ever heard, and they dropped their hammers and braces and sandbags and began to run, howling like wild animals and knocking each other down as they tore along the top of the levee in two directions, away from each other. Fred felt his shoulder grabbed and found he was being pushed by Mr. Vance. He tumbled down and got up again and ran. The cattle under the levee howled and the women screamed and the men shouted; and under it all was that hideous rumbling, sucking noise like something laughing. Fred ran, hardly knowing why he ran nor where, knocking into men and women and mules and cows, and everybody screamed to everybody else and to heaven—

  “Crevasse!”

  He fell down again, against the sandbags. He stumbled up panting. As he got the mud out of his eyes he saw the men and women trying to drive the cattle up on the levee. The cattle were howling with panic. Fred felt a kick in the pants and heard Mr. Vance shouting,

  “Run, you young fool! Run, I tell you! My God, why did I ever let a kid on the levee? Run, you damned little snipe!”

  Fred ran. Everything was all mixed up, white people and Negroes, mules and cows and pigs and buckets of coffee and papers of sugar and children and sandbags and wheelbarrows. The mob seemed to be slowing down. He was so out of breath he couldn’t run any more. He rubbed his eyes, for they were still muddy, and looked back from where he stood on the levee top.

  Away up yonder where he had come from there was a breach in the levee, and the yellow water was tearing through. The break was only about as wide as an ordinary road. But as he looked the sides tumbled in, caving faster than he could see; the sandbags they had piled fell down like marbles, toppling into the water as it rushed through the crevasse. A terrified cow kicked the end of the sandbag line and the levee caved under her and she fell into the water, trumpeting with panic. Across the widening crevasse Fred could see the men who had fled in the opposite direction from himself. Above the roar of the water he could hear them groaning and cursing as they moved backward. It was as though he stood on a world that had split in two, and he wondered if he would ever see those men again.