Old Powder Man (15 page)

On through several little towns just coming awake he crawled and at last was free; he sped on with nothing on either side but wild grass and trees. It was so hot by early morning that if it got hotter the rest of the day, Son never noticed, he was already so hot. Wind whipping past was arid and continually he sat forward to unstick himself from the seat. Relief came only when trees grew close over the road, casting filigreed shade. It would seem to have rained when cool came on suddenly; even the tires had a different sound after the baked road. Passing Marion, he went on into Marked Tree and had expected a little more, but as far as he could see, there wasn't a thing in the world going on in Marked Tree. He had lunch in a good cafe, Grandma's; for thirty-five cents a plate of vegetables, corn bread and iced tea; you couldn't beat it for the money. Leaving town, he left the main road and drove for some time in back country over a road that was not called one on a map. It petered out to become two tracks through a cotton field and he thought he must be lost. He saw a Negro standing in a wagon coming toward him, whipping on a mule, and wondered how they would pass when the Negro drew off into a field and stopped. Looking surprised, he took off his hat as Son got out of his car and came toward him. “Uncle,” Son said, “I'm trying to get out yonder to where the work's going on on the levee. How the hell am I going to do it?”

“This here's the levee road,” the Negro said. “You going out to Mister Will's job?”

“That's right,” Son said.

“He out there. Keep on like you going. You be there in a half hour.”

Son wiped his head with a handkerchief already soaked with perspiration, muddy with dust from his face. “Pheww,” he said. For as far as even the Negro standing in the wagon could see there was nothing but flat cotton fields, not even the rows visible, like a solid dark green canvas. The sunbaked sky seemed yellow, the sun a hole in it; heat fit close like a lid. Sweat stood in blisters on the Negro's face and shone in his hair. Son got back in the car and waved. “Much obliged,” he said and as he started the car, the Negro put on his hat.

Driving away, Son looked back apprehensively at the wagon disappearing in their mingled dust. If anything happened to his little old Ford, if anything happened to him, it seemed he'd be out here till they came picking in the fall. There was nothing out here, only silence and the fields where nothing moved.

What in the distance appeared to be clouds took shape gradually as the levee itself. When he came to it, his road ended and another went in either direction; which way should he go? Passing a hand over the yellow grime on his face, he left finger tracks and dust settled like fine rain as he sat, wondering. He took the direction away from the highway he had left some time ago, searching now for what Red had said he would find: some kind of track over the levee. He passed what he thought was a cow path but stopped and backed up; he had come a mile and was about to run out of levee. Cursing, he gunned the car, giving it all it had. The tires spun on the hard road and the car shot ahead; as he wheeled onto the new path, the car's rear swung wildly. Gunning it again and again, he fought his way up, thinking he would not make it; then he spun the wheels once more and was on top of the levee, going in the direction he had chosen, wondering who the hell had had the nerve to make the road. Machinery had not cut it; it had been made by the determination of people driving the same place until they had worn the two ruts he now followed. He ate dust but would suffocate with the windows up. Summoning saliva to wash the dust down, he thought, it even tasted yellow. Fine as flour it sifted over the car and slid from the fenders. A wasp buzzed about his head and threw itself against the windshield, seeking escape, but he kept his eyes on the road, his hands gripping the wheel, his foot steady on the gas, knowing any deviation from the ruts would send the light car hurtling down the embankment, on the one side into the silent green fields and on the other into high grass that led away into a mass of tree tops. Beyond them was where he wanted to go. His tires crunching rocks cast them steadily with sharp clicks against the underside of the car. Ahead he saw the place to descend and gently applied brakes. When he stopped, the silence was as if a battle had ended. Dust showered him like fireworks and lay on the windshield so thick he had to turn on the wipers. Behind him the sun was going down where smoke curled up from town. Below, birds swung on tall weeds making various cries, cheeps, twitters, squeaks. Every bug he had ever heard made its own sound in the grass, magnified by the silence, until it seemed the insects were all in the car, even in him, the way when he heard a band, the bass drum seemed to be the beat of his own heart, a thousand times louder. Now with a buzz, final and loud, the wasp flew away. He looked back once at the long way he had come, realizing he would have to retrace it to find a place to sleep tonight. Already tired, he put his foot to the gas and turned the car down the levee bank.

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 shuffled 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.”