by Gwen Bristow
As he watched, the break was two hundred feet wide, four hundred, six hundred. The water was spreading over the fields in a yellow fan-shaped lake, sucking the levee under with a noise that was still like laughter, the way the man in Sunday School said God would laugh on the Judgment Day. Beyond the advancing edge of the water women were untying the boats they had made ready at their doorsteps and scrambling into them. Children were climbing into the trees where they had hung their toys. They screamed for their mothers, but their mothers could not reach them. The water pushed along the outer slope of the levee till the levee top was like a long island, twelve feet wide and reaching as far as they could see. Men and women and animals were jammed on it, moving backward in a lump, afraid lest the levee cave under them as the crevasse widened.
The two broken ends of the levee still crumbled. The crevasse was a thousand feet wide. The water had covered the fields and the road beyond and was still rising. Women and children were trying to row their boats toward the levee, but were making small headway against the current from the crevasse. Some of them were being pushed around in circles. The water had entered the houses. It rose and covered all but the chimneys of the little cabins. It was still rising.
On a branch of a tree near the levee Fred could see a nest with four little birds. The two parent birds were flying around them, screaming. The baby birds had their mouths open. The water rose to the lower branches and crept up. It crept up and up. It lifted the nest off the limb and the parent birds fluttered helplessly. The current turned the nest upside down.
“It wasn’t no good,” said Fred. “Our levee wasn’t no good.”
He was talking to nobody in particular. Everybody was making a lot of noise and no one paid any attention to him. All of a sudden Fred felt something hurt in his throat. It was a different hurt from the ache in his back and legs. He put his sleeve up to his eyes. He hoped nobody saw him. It made him ashamed, for he had not cried since he was a little bit of a kid. As he took his arm down he saw Mr. Vance, sitting on the levee, his legs hunched up under his chin as he watched the spreading desolation. Mr. Vance put the back of his hand to one eye and then to the other. At that Fred felt his own eyes smarting again. He surreptitiously raised up his arm. Mr. Vance caught sight of him and gave him a funny crooked grin. He reached out and pulled Fred to sit down on the damp earth by him.
“We won’t tell on each other, will we, son?”
Fred shook his head. He was afraid to try to talk lest he be unable to swallow the hurt in his throat. But it was comforting to sit by Mr. Vance and know that even a big bossy man like him could get tears in his eyes at the sight of a crevasse.
The water had covered the smaller trees, and the branches of the bigger ones poked above the surface, thick with birds. The sun was tauntingly bright on the ripples. Here and there in the swirling lake Fred could see a chimney or the crest of a roof. The men on the levee called encouragement to their wives struggling toward them in the rowboats. Bouncing in the water were chairs, tables, mattresses, bodies of drowned cows and pigs.
After awhile Fred thought maybe he could speak.
“Mr. Vance,” he said, “ain’t there no way to build a levee so it won’t break?”
Mr. Vance gave a long slow sigh. “I don’t know, son. They say they can. But so help me God, I don’t know.”
Fred watched the carcass of a cow thump against the levee. Her udder was heavy with milk.
“When I get grown up,” said Fred, “I’d like to build levees. Levees that can’t break so people won’t have to have things like this happen to ’em.”
“Hell,” said Mr. Vance.
Mr. Vance was mad. Fred didn’t blame him. Only he himself didn’t feel exactly mad. He felt defeated. All that backbreaking work, and now it was exactly as if they hadn’t worked at all.
It was getting to be night. The sun went down. The day halted for a moment, with stark white light in which everything was clearer than it had been in the sun. Then, abruptly, it was dark.
The folks on the levee had built a bonfire. Fred could smell coffee. Some of the women had stocked their boats with provisions, so he guessed they wouldn’t starve.
“How long do we stay here like this, Mr. Vance?” he ventured.
“What?” Mr. Vance turned his head sharply, as though his mind as well as his eyes had been on nothing but the yellow destruction before him.
Fred repeated his question.
“Oh, a day or two. The state has a fleet of boats out for relief. Soon as they hear there’s been a crevasse up here they’ll send for us. We won’t drown. That water’s as high as it’s going to get.”
“You know all about the river, don’t you?” Fred asked enviously.
“I ought to,” Mr. Vance returned grimly. “Been working it most of my life. But I reckon don’t anybody know all about this river.”
Fred wished he could run away. He felt he wanted never to see another crevasse as long as he lived. Bodies of animals kept bumping against the levee. Furniture and pieces of clothing floated by, all sorts of things, things people had and took care of. In spite of Mr. Vance, Fred kept thinking there had to be a way to build levees that would keep things like this from happening.
He sat there in the dark, while the bonfires glittered over the water and the refugees huddled around them. Mr. Vance stretched out on the ground, his arm under his head.
“Better try to sleep, son,” he suggested.
Fred lay down too.
“Mr. Vance,” he said, “before you go to sleep—”
“Yes?”
“Do you work on the river all the time?”
“Pretty much. Why?”
“I’d like to work levees. Maybe if I worked them all the time I could help think up ways to build ’em stronger. You reckon I could work with you?”
Mr. Vance reached over and patted Fred’s arm. “Well, I tell you, son, if you grow up to be smarter than the river you’ll be a mighty big man. I don’t reckon you’ll ever be that smart. But—let’s see. You ever been to school?”
“All the way through the fourth grade,” said Fred eagerly, though he didn’t quite see what that had to do with piling dirt on a levee.
“Take arithmetic?”
“You’re mighty right I did,” Fred exclaimed. “I was the best in the class. We was up to problems about decimal fractions. I could do every one of ’em.”
“Well, I tell you,” said Mr. Vance. “I don’t see why you shouldn’t work regular.”
“You mean it?” Fred sat up.
“Sure. You shut up now and go to sleep.”
“Yes sir.” Fred lay down. But even as he watched the bonfires flickering over the terrible water he felt happy. He was going to fight the river, and besides he had a regular job. Maybe ma had been right after all about making him go to school. He hoped the rescue boats would come in a hurry so he could get home and tell her.
2
Corrie May knew she shouldn’t be worried about Fred. He was a sensible boy and could look out for himself. But when she heard there’d been a crevasse up the river she was troubled in her mind. As she could not make out what the papers said about the flood, she spent as much time as she could around the wharfs, asking the men there if they’d heard anything about Fred. No, they said, they hadn’t, but they supposed he was all right. But she found their optimism far from satisfying.
So one noontime a week after the crevasse, when she came out of her alley with a basket of clean clothes on her arm and caught sight of Fred walking toward their lodgings, Corrie May dropped her basket right there on the street and rushed toward him, calling his name. Fred came running along the sidewalk to meet her.
“Oh, Fred honey,” she cried, “I been so worried! Oh, praise the Lord you’re all right, Fred sugar—”
She hugged and kissed him, too happy to remember he was a big boy now and aver
se to such goings-on.
Fred gave an embarrassed laugh and wriggled himself out of her arms. “Oh ma, can’t you see I’m all right? Quit kissing me!”
“But Fred, I been so upset! Was you there when the levee broke?”
“Sure, I was there,” he returned like a fellow who knew all about everything and found it boresome to recount his adventures.
“Tell me about it.”
“Oh, I’ll tell you sometime,” Fred answered nonchalantly. “Take too long now. Say, you better get them clothes. Somebody’s gonta walk off with ’em.”
Together they went back to where she had dropped the basket. “I’ll tote it for you,” Fred offered as she reached for the handle.
Corrie May’s excitement was subsiding enough to let her take a good look at him. “Fred Upjohn,” she exclaimed, “you sure is a sight.”
Her eyes went over him. Fred’s clothes were stiff with dried mud. His shirt dangled in strips, one sleeve entirely gone, and the bottoms of his trouser-legs flapped like fringe about his dirty shins. Even his hair was caked with earth.
But Fred laughed at her shocked gaze. “Man does get dirty up on a levee,” he said airily. “Say, it sure is getting hot. You feel like some lemonade?”
“Lemonade?” she gasped.
Fred was already strolling over to a stall where refreshments were offered for sale, and she heard him grandly giving orders for two glasses of iced lemonade. “And mind you squeeze the lemons fresh,” he directed the boy.
Amazed, Corrie May followed him. Except for the year she had spent with Gilday she had never been affluent enough to buy such luxuries. She stared as Fred laid down a dollar bill in payment for the drinks and gathered up the change. He grinned, handing her the glass.
“Right nice, ain’t it?” he commented. He had set the clothes-basket on the ground by him.
She nodded. “But Fred, you ain’t got no business wasting your money like this. You ought to get yourself some clothes. That outfit of yourn ain’t fit to be a dishrag.”
“Oh, I’ll get some clothes,” said Fred. Corrie May was suddenly aware that she had to look up to him as he talked. Fred began to stroke the ground with his toes. “And—er—ma,” he began.
“What?”
Fred got a little bit pink. He stammered. “Er—you—I mean—you better get a dress too. Here.”
He reached into his pocket and offered her a five-dollar bill.
“Fred! What you been doing?” Corrie May demanded in alarm. She gripped his elbow. “Is you been up to something you shouldn’t?”
“No, no. Lemme go, ma. Holding me like I was a baby! You know I been working on the levee upriver! These is my wages. Ten cents an hour I got, and I worked twelve-fifteen hours a day, Sundays and all. We even got paid for the time we sat on the levee waiting for the relief boat.”
Corrie May swallowed a scrap of ice from the lemonade and coughed. “Well, well,” she said when she could speak. For the first time she felt almost ill at ease with him. He was so grown up. She asked politely, “Was it bad, the flood?”
“Yes. Right bad,” Fred answered briefly. “But ma, that ain’t what I was gonta tell you.” He set his empty glass on the counter.
“Look, Fred,” she interrupted, “there comes a carriage. If they get out maybe they’d give you a nickel to hold the horses.”
“I ain’t holding no more horses.” Fred did not even glance at the carriage. But as she set down her own glass Corrie May noticed that it was the carriage from Ardeith, so it was just as well. She didn’t want Fred to have to work for the Larnes. “Listen, ma,” Fred was saying. “I got a job. I mean a real sho ’nough job, regular.”
She turned back to him in delight. “Honest? Doing what?”
“Learning how to be a levee man.” Fred had lost his embarrassment and was talking fast. “Ma, I’m gonta work for Mr. Vance; he’s the fellow that bossed the job I just been on. He knows more about levees—” Fred sounded almost out of breath with eagerness. “I’m gonta start in Monday. He’s giving me three dollars a week to start with. He says if I keep on I can get to be a boss like him. I might even get to be a contractor building levees for the government.”
“Why—Fred!” Her face glowed as she listened.
“And them contractors is big men, they go to Washington and everything, sometimes they even get to talk to the President—”
“My Lord,” gasped Corrie May.
It was all she could say. This was too much for her to answer. Fred was still talking, but she could hardly listen for the glorious whirling in her head. Fred Upjohn, her own son, talking to the President. Corrie May saw the Ardeith carriage come to a stop by the curb. She saw Denis Larne get out, a slender, exquisite young gentleman in a gray broadcloth suit.
“—and ma, it’s really just like you told me. Mr. Vance said didn’t nobody but niggers used to work the levees. In the days when the planters all had so many slaves they just put the niggers on ’em, but now if a white boy don’t mind working he can learn all about levees and get to be a real big man—”
Denis Larne held out his hand and assisted his mother to alight from the carriage. Involuntarily Corrie May’s eyes followed Ann, who stood still an instant while Denis closed the carriage door behind her. How striking she was still, though she was no longer young. She had on a dark blue silk dress and a dark blue bonnet with a yellow plume across the top. Her bodice was laced to elegant fragility, and below it her skirt fell to the ground, so tight Corrie May wondered if she didn’t have to tie her knees together to take a step without splitting it. And young Denis in his impeccable broadcloth was no less elegant as he took her arm with the grace of perfect assurance. The splendor faded out of Corrie May’s mind. That magnificent confidence of birth! Fred might get to be the biggest contractor that ever was, she thought wistfully, but he’d never acquire such effortless charm as that. It took—oh, generations. With a sensation of resentment she remembered her father’s legend that she and Ann Sheramy had an ancestor in common. Fred’s voice was going on insistently in her ears.
“—now listen, ma, if I’m making three dollars a week you won’t have to do so much washing. Tell the truth, you won’t have time. If I’m gonta be a regular working man I expect I’ll need you to keep house for me—”
Reluctantly she turned her eyes from Denis Larne back to him. “Yes, Fred,” she agreed, not wanting to spoil his pleasure, “I reckon you will.”
“Sure I will. Mr. Vance says if I work good, pretty soon I’ll be making lots more than that. I can learn how to build a levee from the ground up. He told me about it. Up there waiting for the relief boat he didn’t have so much to do, so him and me could talk. He said I did as good work as any full-grown man on the job.” With a proud grin Fred began to look around for some other acquaintance to whom he could tell his grand news. “Look, ma,” he went on, “I’ll deliver these here clothes for you; then I’m gonta walk around the wharf awhile and see the men. You go on home and cook supper. Get us a beefsteak. I got money for it.” He jogged her elbow impatiently. “Oh ma, quit watching them people!”
“That young man sure looks fine,” said Corrie May.
“I bet he ain’t never done a day’s work in his life,” Fred retorted contemptuously. “Now ma, you get that beefsteak—oh, I declare, I don’t believe you’re hearing a word I’m saying!”
“Yes I am,” Corrie May said tensely. She put her hand on Fred’s arm. This was the arm that had no sleeve on it. She felt the tough young muscles rising under his dirty skin. Her eyes went back to the Larnes, as Denis graciously assisted his mother into a shop. Her mind went back to the Larnes too. She remembered how she had fought them and how utterly they had conquered her at every turn. But she looked at the unconsciously disdainful figure of Ann’s son, perfect embodiment of a tradition that no longer had any reason for existence. It came to her like a flash of glory that thou
gh her son had inherited no tradition he had the strength of which fresh traditions were made.
“Are you listening to me, ma?” Fred demanded. “Will you get that beefsteak?”
“Sure,” said Corrie May heartily. “I’ll get that beefsteak. I’ll cook you the best supper you ever ate in your life.”
She watched the last flicker of young Denis Larne’s coattails as he disappeared into the shop, and as she watched him her eyes were full of triumph.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Plantation Trilogy
Chapter One
The sky was like thick blue velvet, and the river glittered in the sun. The time was January, 1912. Eleanor Upjohn, who was ten years older than the century, sat before her typewriter in the main tent of the levee camp by the river, answering her father’s correspondence. Her father, Fred Upjohn, contractor in charge of the work, was reading and signing the letters while he finished the cigar he smoked after his noon dinner.
Fred and Eleanor were very good friends. They respected each other. Fred had spent thirty years building ramparts to hold the river back from the towns and plantations that bordered it, and when Eleanor came home from college announcing that she had studied stenography in her spare time and wanted to work, Fred welcomed her as his secretary. He had no regard for idleness.
Eleanor could remember him as he had been when she was a little girl, studying in the ring of light made by a kerosene lamp, while her mother, the baby in her arms and the coming baby bulging her apron, urged him to go to bed and at the same time kept bringing coffee to keep him awake. Eleanor was proud of him. From sandbag-toter to the best levee contractor on the Mississippi—not many men could boast such a rise. Today the Upjohns had a home on one of the most beautiful residential streets in New Orleans, and when Fred came upriver to supervise the construction of a levee he lived in spacious comfort.