The Tilted World: A Novel

by Tom Franklin

  Ham and Ingersoll didn’t discuss much, but the next day was Sunday and they rose early and found the minister alone in the woods behind his house, standing on a stump, practicing his sermon. He wouldn’t give up the names of his still workers, the ones who’d helped with the lynching. Ingersoll and Ham had had to persuade him, with the help of the axe in the chopping block with a few chicken feathers stuck to it.

  Before they left town, they stopped by the Indianapolis Times to drop off a carton that contained photos, and the minister’s Kleagle robe, and his Bible with the names of his fellow Klansmen on the flyleaf, as well as the three-volume book the minister had been proofing for the printer, Inspirational Addresses from the Pulpit and the Second Imperial Klonvocation, Including Burial Rituals for Klansmen, Instructions for Indoor Klavern Crosses, and Klankraft Exams for Those Wishing to Advance in Rank or Degree. And the minister’s pinkie.

  They’d gone on a weeklong bender after that and were in South Bend infiltrating the Nanni brothers, who ginned for the big, merry priests of Notre Dame, when they were pulled off duty by the commissioner and loaned to Hoover, sent to the flooded South. Of course, ever since August of last year they’d seen dishrag-colored clouds being wrung and wrung over Nebraska and Kansas, South Dakota and Oklahoma, the nation’s breadbasket soggy and disintegrating, Iowa and Illinois, Kentucky and Ohio. By September, the rivers had overbanked Peoria, four dead, then more rain fell, seven dead, washing out bridges from Terre Haute to Jacksonville. The Neosho River hopped its banks and bowled through Kansas. A tree toppled into an oil pipeline, ten more dead, and then the river was a river of fire, and now the damages were in the millions. Fifteen inches of rain fell in three September days in Iowa, flooding fifty thousand acres around Sioux City.

  By then it was October, the dry season, and still fell the rains, the Illinois River at its highest in history. The rain turned to snow, thirty inches in Helena in a day. By Christmas, railroad traffic was suspended over the river, and the gauge at Vicksburg read forty feet at a time when it normally read zilch.

  And then the snow melted. The Ohio flooded at Cincinnati on January 28. In early February, the White and Little Red Rivers flooded a hundred thousand acres in Arkansas. New Orleans got six inches of rain in twenty-four hours, and local floods in the Mississippi Valley killed thirty-two. In March, more snow fell, from the Rockies to the Ozarks. And between March 17 and March 20, three tornadoes swept through the Mississippi Valley, killing forty-five while the preachers did a record business, what retributions for our sins, O my Lord, O my Lord. Have mercy.

  No mercy to be had. All these lands, all these rivers drained into the mighty Mississippi, and it had spread and spread, eaten up its batture, barrow pit, and berm. Although the Mississippi River Commission maintained that the eleven hundred miles of levees, each mile of levee containing 421,100 cubic yards of earth, could withstand the scour and fury, river towns were quaking. They set up guards in tent cities. Where there wasn’t enough levee left to hold tents, shock troops were housed on barges, helmed by veterans of the Great War, the American Legion running levee kitchens to feed everyone. Foremen were white, of course, and the blacks were building the levees higher, bricking walls of sandbags or buttressing them with banquette planks, trying not to get shot or get gone, swept away into the river.

  Ingersoll stood and moved aside as two men rushed down the boardinghouse hallway—the Atlanta engineers Ham had chatted up, from his description. One man was dressed and hatted and carrying a valise, the other still in his robe. Ingersoll dumped the mud clods into Mrs. Vatterott’s potted plant and dusted his hands. From inside Ham’s room his gruff humming paused, which Ingersoll knew meant Ham was shaving his throat. One time in Galesburg Ham had gashed his neck while singing and came to breakfast with a white plaster like a priest’s collar and growled, “Sliced my Adam’s apple so bad I’ll be bleeding cider for a week.”

  The engineers stomped down the steps, and at the bottom of the landing, the dressed engineer opened the door. He turned and said to the other, “You’re a fool, Kenneth. A goddamn fool.”

  He looked up and saw Ingersoll standing by Ham’s door and yelled, “All of you! Fools!” and whirled about and slammed the door.

  The commotion brought Ham out of his room, dabbing a bit of lather from his neck with a towel, wearing his not-quite-so-new clothes. Kenneth was climbing the steps slowly and looked up at them and shrugged.

  “He’s probably right. My wife will be furious. But I can’t seem to walk away from a job once I’ve started it.”

  “Why his problem?” Ham wanted to know.

  “I’m married to his sister. He tells me he’ll have to take care of her when I’m blown up.”

  “Blown up?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t you hear? About the explosives?”

  “What the hell?”

  “Last night in Greenville, undercover police had the train station surrounded, because fifty pounds of dynamite were stolen from Camp Beauregard in Louisiana and smuggled on the train to Greenville.”

  “Jesus. What happened?”

  “When they boarded in Greenville, the explosives had already been removed. Snuck off at a prior stop.”

  All three were quiet as that sank in.

  “Who are they saying is responsible?”

  “No one knows who stole it. And no one knows who received it. But everyone is panicked about what saboteurs could do to the levee with fifty pounds of dynamite.” Kenneth moved on down the hall. “We all better pray for a clear night, so the saboteurs don’t have cloud cover.” He stopped and shook his head. “You know, I am a goddamn fool,” he said, then continued toward his room.

  Ham opened his door and Ingersoll followed him in, saying “Jesus.”

  “I know. We’d better reach Hoover. I was already planning to telephone him to say we can’t wrap this up in a week, that we need more time.”

  Ingersoll nodded.

  “He’ll be expecting us to check in after this bit of news,” Ham continued. “I’m guessing our job description has been revised to include saboteur catchers.”

  “I wish we had something to give him. About the still, if not Little and Wilkinson.”

  Ham had been sniffing out the Stickers, knowing that was Jesse’s side, but all he found was a bunch of down-on-their-luck farmers who felt they should struggle and die on the same land where their parents had struggled and died. “I talked to about everyone, and I didn’t find anyone with enough gumption to be a federal agent killer,” Ham said. “What’d you learn, Ing?”

  Not much, though he’d been in the barbershop when the police captain drove by in a new Packard, red spokes on the tires and the word POLICE painted on the side. The other men in the shop had snorted at the sight of it.

  “Mighty poor town to be setting up the captain in a fancy new car,” said Ham.

  “Captain’s on the take.” Ingersoll turned the cane-back chair around and swung a leg over. “But we’d guessed as much.”

  A pause grew as they worried about Hoover. They wouldn’t use the phone downstairs—it was a party line, with three rings to indicate the call was for the rooming house. They’d have to find a private line, maybe at the post office, and wait until Hoover could be reached at whatever train station he’d be visiting.

  Ham opened the drawer of his nightstand and removed a leather grooming case that he must have purchased at the dry goods. He set it on a Bible marked “Property of Mrs. S. R. Vatterott—Do Not Steal,” and slid out small scissors and a bone comb and angled a round shaving mirror so he could see his face. He swiveled his head from side to side and trimmed a few stray hairs that were coming in white and of a coarser texture than his coarse red muttonchops. Then he set to combing the chops, and Ingersoll knew he was pondering what they should do.

  “Okay,” Ham said. “We’d better ratchet things up. It’s time to confirm that the still’s on Jesse’s
land, and see if we can spot who’s working it, and get them to talk. One of us needs to do that, the other phone Hoover.”

  The cane-back chair was fraying and Ingersoll tried to press an errant straw back into its weave. He didn’t want any part of either.

  “I’ll telephone Hoover,” Ham decided. He clicked the scissors closed and slid them into their case.

  So Ingersoll had to go to Jesse’s house—her house. “No, I’ll find a telephone. You go to his house.”

  “Naw,” said Ham. “I’m tired a horses. Hate the way they smoosh my gems.” Ham reached a hand into his pants to give them a shake. “I’ll be sterile as a mule, and the world devoid of little Hamsters.” He removed his hand and lifted up the mirror to admire his grooming. “You ride on out. But be careful. Somebody’s out there cooking the shine while Jesse’s goosing the coat check girl. And that somebody’s probably nervous as a pig at a barbecue.”

  “Everybody’s gonna be nervous, once word of the explosives gets out.”

  “After I reach Hoover, I’ll go to the levee. We better pray that there’s no fog until Hoover has time to send in more agents. Jesus, Ing, fifty pounds of dynamite. And army issue, so it’s probably old, sawdust soaked in nitroglycerin and then wrapped in wax paper. The sticks weeping all to shit, crystallized, the case never turned over once, is my guess. And now it’s here.” Ham was sitting on the bed, his gray eyes narrowed, staring at the wall as if a vision of Armageddon were projected on it. They’d seen photos of Dorena, Missouri, after the levee had collapsed. Houses on concrete blocks were simply swatted away. Houses on foundations filled with water. Folks had rushed to their attics and then axed holes through the ceilings to climb out onto their roofs, where they’d been rescued. Or some of them had. And that was Missouri. This far south, river at fifty-four feet and the flood crest bearing down, it would be much, much worse.

  “You’ll have to figure out where Jesse lives,” Ham continued. “I know it’s out in the country a far piece, south of town. Place called Sugar Hill. He doesn’t sell from his house anymore, but he doesn’t know we know that, so if you happen to get caught, say you come to buy hooch.”

  If Ham had been looking in the mirror instead of slipping the grooming case back into the drawer, he might have seen a struggle on Ingersoll’s face. Why he didn’t tell Ham he knew the house, knew the wife, he didn’t know, but his instinct was to hide the fact that just over a week ago he’d been there, trying not to get shot by a firecracker of a gal who didn’t come up to his shoulder. Hell, barely came up to his ribs, he thought, and remembered the two of them standing close and looking down at Junior’s face.

  For something to do, he brushed Ham’s muttonchop trimmings off the bed with the back of his hand, then walked to the window. They were on the second floor with a good view of most of the square, the people below rushing to work. Outside, he saw a newspaper gust by and tent itself against the face of a suited man, who flung it aside, where it landed on the face of the man behind him.

  Ingersoll rose. “See you at dinner.”

  He was a staid horse, Horace, without a levee trembling beneath him. He plodded along under Ingersoll, splashing through gutters that were like small streams, breaking stride only to jump the whirlpool over the sewer grate by City Hall where a turtle circled helplessly. Ingersoll hated to see it and raised his head to the loud crows on the telephone wire, looking like notes on a music score. Christ, he missed his guitar. After a few years as partners, he and Ham had acquired a Ford. They’d confiscated it from bootleggers, who’d installed an extra gas tank to hide whiskey, and Ingersoll reconverted it so they could drive twice as far without gassing up. There’d been nights, plenty of nights, when he and Ham had driven through strange country. Usually Ham rode shotgun but sometimes they’d switch so Ingersoll could reach an arm through the window and pull his guitar from the rope on the roof. He’d taught himself to play left-handed, the neck out the window, belting the blues into the air frisking him at fifty miles an hour. He’d like to be holding it now, that lovely Slingerland May-Bell acoustic, style number 5.

  Might as well add it to the list of things he’d like to be holding.

  The pavement ended and the telephone line, too, and patches of woods alternated with cornfields where the wind gusted stronger, tugging a tear from Horace’s eye. Ingersoll gave up trying to light his dime cigar. This Natchez tobacco wasn’t for shit. Best thing about it was the box, which featured Alcazar—now that was a beautiful horse. “Nothing against you, Horace,” he said and patted his mount’s neck. He should have kept that box and built himself a throwaway guitar.

  The rhythm of the horse took him into reverie, and he found himself picturing his return to Dixie Clay’s, in his new clothes, riding down the drive and her running with Junior in her arms to thank him. Ingersoll would say—

  A horn spooked him, and he shook his head as a Ford swerved around Horace. Don’t matter if you have a new shirt, that gal’s married, even if it’s to a husband that doesn’t deserve her or Junior. Hell, Junior’s probably not even Junior anymore. What would they name him?

  Ingersoll himself had once been a celebrated namer of babies. This began when he was about six, and he came upon Sister Mary Eunice doing intake on a newborn. The baby had been left the previous night on the stoop in a black leather doctor’s satchel. Beside Mary Eunice was a novitiate she was training. Ingersoll was too short to see what they were doing on the examining table, but he stood beside Sister’s elbow.

  “Six pounds, six ounces,” the head sister told the novitiate, who scratched her pencil in the ledger. He heard, too, the snap of the measuring tape. “Length, twenty inches.” More scratches, another snap. “Head, thirteen inches. And as for name . . .”

  Now there was a pause as the sister whisked the yellow measuring tape from the table and began to coil it. She leaned farther over the table. “Peter?”

  Sister Mary Eunice held the baby up now and faced it toward the nun-in-training, who tapped her pencil on her pooched lips.

  “Yes, I think so,” said the novitiate.

  “Well, then. Peter.”

  And the pencil scratched again.

  The next day at recess Ingersoll was chasing the kickball when he ran smack into the kneecap of Sister Mary Eunice, connecting solidly through her immense black gown and ending once and for all the discussion among the boys about whether she had legs under there or just wheels. She rubbed her knee as he rubbed his and tried not to cry.

  “Come sit,” she said.

  He did. It was brisk, but the slats of the bench were warm on the back of his legs. They watched a few dried leaves crabbing across the asphalt and the sister stopped rubbing and rested her arm on Ingersoll’s shoulders.

  “Companionable, isn’t it?”

  But he was thinking about something else. “Sister? Yesterday, with that doctor-bag baby? How did you know its name?”

  “Well, I didn’t at first. But if I give a quick prayer, it seems the right name comes to me.”

  “And Peter was the right name?”

  “Did you see that baby, Teddy?”

  He nodded. He’d seen the baby later in its bed.

  “Did he look like a Peter to you?”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  She smiled. They watched the kickball game for a few rounds.

  “Sister?”

  “What is it, Teddy?”

  “Is that how you came up with my name? How come I’m a Teddy?”

  “Yes, that’s so.”

  The rubber ball bounced to his feet and he caught it and threw it back into the game. “Sister, can anyone do that? I mean, could I?”

  “Name a baby?”

  He nodded.

  “Certainly. You’ll name the next one.”

  He waited, but it took almost three weeks before another baby arrived. He’d already been considering names but chased them o
ut as soon as they sidled in, because he knew it was important to match the name to the baby. So when one came, that’s what he did. He studied its wrinkly face, one of those babies who looks like an old man, dark downy hair along the edges of his face like sideburns. Ingersoll closed his eyes and said a little prayer that went, “God, please tell me his name.”

  And God said, “Brendan.”

  And Ingersoll said, “Brendan.”

  And Sister Mary Eunice confirmed it. “Brendan,” she said with a nod. “It’s a powerful name, Teddy. It’s a voyager’s name. St. Brendan traveled for seven years, don’t you know, sailed the seas and discovered North America.”

  Poor Sister, she didn’t know about Columbus. But he was glad she liked the name. And it stuck. Everyone in the orphanage used it and he was proud each time he heard it and the baby was chosen by new parents within three days. Good-bye, Brendan, tiny voyager.

  They let him name another. Emboldened, he pronounced the next baby Ivanhoe the Third. The nuns loved it; he heard them saying the name wherever he went. “This boy has a great imagination,” one nun said to a couple wearing matching tweed coats who had come for a baby. The nun smoothed his hair with her palm and nudged him toward them. “A bright boy,” she continued. “He named our newest baby ‘Ivanhoe the Third.’ ”

  “A baby? You have a baby?” said the tweedy woman. The nun sighed and led them down the hallway.

  Ingersoll didn’t care. He was the namer. It was his responsibility. It was a big job for a big boy. Someone’s name mattered in who they grew up to be.

  The next baby he named “Felix Xanadu.” Sister Mary Eunice paused and looked up over the log to say, “That’s a mouthful, Teddy.”