Knee-Deep in Wonder (7 page)

Now, instead of planning visits to faraway family, the Sillers tenants had conversations that stayed close to the strength of the nearest levees, man-made structures that kept the river in its place. Many thought they should gather what they could and travel as far east as possible but, deep into debt with Mr. Sillers, no one could travel even to Jackson. And worst of all, there was gossip that Mrs. Sillers and her children had left for New York weeks ago.

So they gathered. Dread licked at their feet at night and no one wanted to say aloud what passed in front of their minds: that this was the one, the culmination of God's wrath that would wash away the sinners. If true, they were damned. Hadn't He said forty days and forty nights? A month had passed they were sure. Thirty-four days turned into thirty-seven, but there had been that five-hour break that stood between them and God's word. Mrs. Hubbert swore she had counted out the hours: from one to six o'clock. Others weren't so sure how long the lapse had lasted: wasn't it just as long as it took to get dinner ready? But Mrs. Hubbert held fast to her godless knowledge; five hours, no more, no less. Her certainty filled the Sillers tenants with fear, since to admit she was right was to concede that they were not destined; they were just unlucky.

They met, but not in the usual place, the church. With its weak roof, the church had stood in almost two feet of rain by the second week; now, at the beginning of June, the pews swam underwater. The tenants congregated instead at the Hubberts', safe from drowning since Mr. Hubbert tarred his roof each January. Desperate, neighbors crowded into the house; they spoke all at once. Maybe they should run, but where to? Texas too far away, flashed one woman's voice, silencing them for a moment. Despite themselves and their notions of self-sufficiency, they thought of getting help from Mr. Sillers, who hadn't said a word about the rain to any of his tenants. As far as they could tell, he still expected them to lay seed and chop cotton. But as quickly as they thought of him, they dismissed his phantom help. Wasn't it because of him they couldn't leave in the first place? Brooding produced a long stretch of silence, and in that space they pulled together the rumors they had heard from as far away as St. Louis. Murmuring turned to shouting. The old, feeling ignored, coughed sharply into their hands and banged the ground with weathered canes. Their hands rose as they assured people that just north of them the river had broken and stretched as long and calm as a dance floor.

Mrs. Hubbert moved into the middle of the room, trying to shoo away the small children running around the house. “Can't y'all go somewhere?” she said. Chess, who stood at her side, began tugging on her dress. “What, boy? Can't you see we taking care of grown folks' business?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Round up these kids and put them somewhere.”

“Can we go outside?”

“It's raining.”

“I know it. But Mr. Paw said he gone make a raft. We can gone out and help.”

“Well, Lord Jesus, what he think this is, God's flood?” His mother waited for laughter to scoop up her words but, the silence too long for her to bear, she added quickly, “Lord know he ain't no Noah,” and then it came from every mouth, cautiously and without mirth. Mrs. Hubbert looked at the seven children standing at the front door. “Well, y'all gone and help Mr. Paw. Better than having you underfoot.” The door swept open, then banged closed. Still in the middle of the room, Mrs. Hubbert thought, Well, at least them children gone. Might as well tell them what you heard, minus the ribbons you might add. She looked closely at the twelve men standing in the room, their hats still on. And they, in turn, watched Mrs. Hubbert, since sending children away always meant bad news.

Mr. Till plucked off his hat and spoke out. “Well, come on, Miz Hubbert. Say what you want.”

“I been hearing how them levee men round up black folk and carry them off.” Her words prompted a small rumble of voices.

Mr. Hubbert said softly, “We ain't that bad off.”

“Fixing to be.”

“Ain't you the one that started the laughing just now?”

“That was for them children's sakes. Mr. Paw ain't no fool; if he—”

“Girl, God ain't bout to send us no old-ass nigger for Noah.”

“Who done said he's Noah? I ain't said that. I'm just saying Mr. Paw ain't no fool, is all.”

“We right behind the government levee, girl.”

“Don't I know it? But them levees just like this here house: man-made. If ain't no need to worry, why they been sweeping up the black folk?” She reached for her husband's hand. “We should hitch out and gone to the levee now. Tween all of us, we got three wagons. Let's get what we got—” Again she did not get to finish her thought. Angry, her husband interrupted.

“I ain't heading out to no levee. I seen Mr. Sillers on his own porch just yesterday, smoking his pipe. He ain't moved on no levee.” Mr. Hubbert banged his hand on his table. But Mr. Till, who had coaxed Mrs. Hubbert into saying what was on her mind, spoke up.

“Well, now, that ain't quite right. My wife say he been packing; just real slow at it. She say he got a whole mess of trunks lined up in his parlor. I reckon he gone be gone by tomorrow.” They all turned to Mrs. Till, who stood next to the window.

“He's right. I said just that, and I reckon it's true.”

Mr. Hubbert refused to budge, refused to believe that even he with so little would be asked to leave it all. “I been in this house for more than fifteen years, tarred my roof every end of winter. It ever rain on you in this house? Well?”

“You know it ain't.”

“That's what I'm saying. We don't need to take off to no levee. Right now we just as safe, safer than we would be standing under some white man.” Mrs. Hubbert turned her back to her neighbors and cupped her husband under the chin.

“We can stay on here if you want. I ain't gone make us leave. But something's cooking if even Mr. Sillers packing.”

Mr. Hubbert lowered his voice, laid his words coaxing and soft between them. “They really picking men to work the levee?”

“Done plucked Willy Boy's son right tween his mama's house and the church.”

“Well, shit,” Mr. Hubbert said, and his curse was quickly eclipsed by the fright that fell on his neighbors' faces. Mothers rubbed their hands over their chests in fear, and then they all began to plan to leave, since black and white alike knew that Willy Boy's son, whose mother liked to call him “my special little bit,” weighed not even one hundred pounds, soaking wet. Though no one would say it aloud, Willy Boy's son was worthless. If they had swiped him up, something really bad lay afoot or else the people running the levee were desperate. Either way, everyone at the Hubberts' house knew it was time to go. The question was which levee. The Greenville levee was closest and strongest, but Mr. Till swore the white people there were mean as spit. The Helena, Mounds Landing, and Yazoo levees were all contemplated and dismissed. Finally the Sillers tenants decided on the Vicksburg levee. Though farther away than Greenville, it would be safest.

Chester spent the next three hours (along with everyone else), packing the good chairs, racing back and forth from his home to the wagon, stuffing between wooden planks nightgowns and Sunday shirts his mother could not bear to part with. Running with his arms full of things considered too worthy or too costly to leave, Chess thought—with the confidence of a fourteen-year-old mind crammed with his mother's nighttime stories of men lifting burning houses single-handedly to shake children gently out the front door—Yes, sir, this here is what I been waiting for all this time. The troubled faces of his neighbors didn't bother him, since to Chess that was how it was supposed to be—the look of flight, soaked clothes clinging to women and children. Chess watched them, their hope making them foolishly jam doors closed and nail to the floors items that were precious but unwieldy. The only thing missing as far as Chess could tell was singing—a choir of voices with baritones and sopranos, perhaps even a small child's voice trailing slightly behind a four/four beat.

More than seven hours had gone by since the tenants decided to flee for the levee when Chess, standing among them, was suddenly snatched up by his mother. Her hand tightened around his arm, dragging him to the wagon. Both mother and child landed inside it with a sharp hah. Mrs. Hubbert leaned toward her husband and said, “Let's get.” And then Chess heard what his dreaming had previously drowned out: a loud plaintive moaning that seemed to come from everywhere.

“Hey, ma'am, what's that noise?”

His mother crouched low, her ear almost kissing her son's mouth. “What's that?”

“That's them cows, ain't it, ma'am? All that noise?”

Mrs. Hubbert pulled back from her son, her face tight. Just a child, a child, she thought, before she answered, “That's the water,” and then she turned completely away from Chess, her body silently urging the mules to race faster than their sloshed clip-clip. And with both parents turned away, wildly spurred on by the roar of water, Chess dreamed again—his neighbors and their journey blinked away and, in their place, Lot fleeing with his two daughters and his wife, their arms thrown upward and bent at the elbow, the bangled wrists of the wicked waving with torture as angels fire down God's wrath. Yes, sir, this sho look like it, cept it's water this time. In the two wagons that seemed to float alongside his father's, rapt bemused faces were all fixed on one point: the levee that lay beyond their sight but stood there nonetheless, like hope lifting her dress to beckon.

Then something happened. The mules knew it first. Aware they were on the verge of being swept away, the mules quickened their pace, flanks taut. They neighed, bucking in their harnesses, shaking their bristled manes, frustrated by short haunches that could not meet their need. Their hooves felt the gash growing miles away. And Mrs. Hubbert, who saw their muscles gathering and tightening beneath their darkening gray hides, let out the breath she had been holding, believing that the mules were now bending to her will.

Chess heard it next, or rather his dreaming heard before him—a long gathering and rolling that caused him to look away from his neighbors and stare back to where they had come from, almost chanting, Well, here it come; yes, sir, it sho is coming. He did not warn his parents that he heard what he did not hear—galloping water that would crash and drown them all within moments. Finally the grown people heard what made the mules lift their heads and snort within their rigging. But then it was too late. The rising Mississippi broke a private levee sixty miles away, leaving a slash in the man-made structure. Everything was swept by water. Chess, his parents, and the neighbors in the wagon could only look on as the other two wagons traveling with them drowned. Everyone in Mr. Hubbert's wagon thought, This is the one. We just didn't see it until now, and Mr. Paw we threw away. Later, Chess would only recall the sound—
ahhh
—and then the noise sliced away, like a spigot turned off.

*   *   *

So in the end Mr. Paw didn't seem so foolish building that raft though, foolish or no, Mr. Paw was shot straight in the air, his raft torn to pieces from the force of the water, and that Greenville government levee everyone promised them would last broke first thing in the morning before breakfast. Afterward (this would be five months on) people closest to Natchez said they woke because of the sound, a deafening peal of thunder. The tenant farmers from the Sillers plantation would say they'd heard no such thing, just a long moan that couldn't seem to stop itself. Even then the Sillers tenants hoped. Weren't they close to the Vicksburg levee? No more than fifty miles, a hard day's ride. If they could make good time, they'd get there in a day and a half. But hope had been misplaced, measured and folded, tucked away beneath the hats of men who still cursed that they were on their way to the levee in the first place. The Sillers tenants hoped the precious items nailed down to the floors of their homes were still dry. Yes, they hoped. Hoped about the wrong things.

Three afternoons later, they made it to Vicksburg. Soaked through, less than half of them remained: four children, five men, six women, two chairs, a trunk's worth of clothes, and a potbelly stove were all they had left. What once was a wagon had turned into a raft, since the sides had been torn off for paddles. And this should have been the end: before them the levee loomed like a fortress, a city in itself. They saw large vats of steaming food and, farther, crowds of people being helped up. Well, it's all about done now, Mr. Hubbert thought, watching the white man who seemed to be in charge of it all come toward him.

“You'll just keep on coming, I reckon.” He stooped low, yelling. “I got enough, niggers.”

Mr. Hubbert spoke up. “We from Sillers.”

“That right?” General Cray Withers laughed with falsetto mirth, the three bands of fat on his chest, stomach, and hips moving quite distinctly from one another. “Well, now. We went by Sillers, couple weeks back, looking for niggers to work.” Withers watched their faces. “Know what? Sillers say he ain't got no working niggers.” Squatting on his haunches, Withers spat casually into the dirt.

“I don't know nothing bout all that.” Mr. Hubbert bowed his head, taking off his hat.

“Don't say?” The general looked up and asked the man next to him, “Mr. Simmons, didn't we ride past the Sillers place looking for niggers and Sillers say he ain't got none?”

“Sho did.”

Withers put his fat hand on his knee, his voice half musing. “Well, now. Seem like me and Simmons got the same recollecting. You ain't saying Mr. Sillers is a lie, is you?”

“Naw, sir.” Mr. Hubbert rubbed his head softly with his hand. His voice carried just a thread of pleading.

“Look like we got a problem. Both me and Simmons got the same recollect, and you and me both know Sillers ain't no lie. You sho you from the Sillers plantation? Maybe that's where the mistake is.”