The Levee

Parish

Chapter 14: The Levee

The gauge at Natchez reads forty-one feet. Flood stage is forty-eight. The margin is seven feet, which is a number, and the number is a comfort, and the comfort is conditional, conditioned on the rain, conditioned on the Ohio and the Missouri and the Arkansas, conditioned on the weather patterns upriver that the parish cannot see and cannot control and that the parish monitors the way a patient monitors a vital sign, with the attention of a person who knows that the number can change and that the changing of the number changes everything.

Seven feet of margin. Clem hears the number on the radio, KFNV out of Ferriday, the morning farm report that includes the river stage because the river stage is farm information in Concordia Parish, the river being as relevant to the farmer as the price of soybeans and the weather forecast, the river being the thing that the farmer lives beside and that the farmer's land was made from and that the farmer's livelihood depends on in ways that are both obvious (the barge traffic that carries the soybeans to market) and subtle (the river's influence on the water table, on the drainage, on the particular quality of the alluvial soil that produces the yields that the soybeans produce).

Forty-one feet. The number sits in the morning the way numbers sit when they are neither alarming nor reassuring, in the middle space, the space between worry and ease, the space that is the parish's permanent emotional address when the river is high, which is: watching, which is: paying attention, which is: knowing that the number exists and that the number measures something that matters and that the mattering is the parish's relationship to the number, the relationship being: We live behind a wall, and on the other side of the wall is the thing that can destroy us, and the wall is holding, and we are watching.

The river is high because of rain. Summer rain upriver. The storms that move through the Midwest in June and July, the storms that drop their water on Iowa and Illinois and Missouri and the dropped water flows downhill the way all water flows, following the law that the levee defies, the water entering the tributaries and the tributaries entering the Mississippi and the Mississippi carrying the accumulated water south, south through Tennessee and Mississippi and Louisiana, the carrying being the river's function, the function that is also the threat, the river being the carrier and the carried being the threat and the threat being the water, always the water.

Clem drives along the levee on a Wednesday afternoon. He has finished his morning calls and his afternoon calls are north of Waterproof and the driving takes him along the levee road, the road that runs on the landside of the levee, below the crown, the road that is the levee's companion, the road from which the levee is visible as a grassy slope rising thirty-two feet to the crown, the slope that is the engineered answer, the human answer, the answer that the parish built and maintains and monitors and prays over.

He stops the truck. He walks up the slope. The grass on the levee is mowed, the mowing being the maintenance, the maintenance being one of the Army Corps of Engineers' requirements, the requirement being: the levee's surface must be maintained, the grass kept short so that the inspectors can see the surface, can detect the signs of distress, the signs being: seepage, settlement, animal burrows, the signs that the levee's integrity is compromised, the integrity being the thing, the only thing, the thing that stands between forty-one feet of river and the parish below.

He stands on the crown. The river is visible. The river is wider than it was in May. The width has increased because the volume has increased, the forty-one feet meaning that the river is higher in its channel and the higher has spread the water wider, the water pushing against the banks, against the levees on both sides, the water pressing outward the way all confined water presses outward, seeking the release, seeking the low place beyond the confinement, and the levee is the confinement, and the confinement holds.

The color has changed. The river in May was brown. The river in July is darker, richer, the color of the soil it carries, the soil that was Iowa's topsoil and Missouri's bottomland and the accumulated sediment of a continent's drainage, the soil suspended in the water the way the parish's stories are suspended in the parish, carried along, deposited, becoming the ground on which everything else is built.

The current is faster. Clem can see the speed in the surface, in the way the water moves around the fixed objects — the buoys, the channel markers, the bridge pilings — the water bending around the objects with the urgency that higher water produces, the urgency being the pressure, the pressure being the volume, the volume being the rain that fell upriver and that has arrived here, at Vidalia, at the gauge that reads forty-one feet.

He thinks about 1927. Everyone in the parish thinks about 1927 when the river is high. The Great Flood. The greatest natural disaster in the nation's history. The river cresting at sixty-one feet at Natchez. The levees breaking at multiple points. The water pouring through the breaks and inundating the Delta, the Mississippi Delta, the flat low land that is the same kind of land that Concordia Parish sits on, the same alluvial plain, the same gift of the river, the same vulnerability.

The 1927 flood is the parish's memory the way the Civil War is the South's memory, the event that divides time into before and after, the event that changed everything, that remade the landscape and the politics and the relationship between the people and the river, the relationship that before 1927 was: We live beside the river and the river floods sometimes and we deal with the flooding, and that after 1927 became: We live behind a levee and the levee is the thing that keeps us alive and the keeping-alive is the levee's purpose and the purpose must be maintained, the maintaining being the perpetual activity, the never-ending work of inspection and repair and reinforcement that the Corps of Engineers performs and that the parish monitors and that the monitoring is the vigilance, the vigilance that is the price of living on a floodplain behind a wall.

Clem's grandfather was in the 1927 flood. Not here — in Pointe Coupee Parish, south and east, but the same river, the same flood, the same water. His grandfather, Marcel Boudreaux, was fifteen when the water came. Marcel told the story to Clem's father and Clem's father told the story to Clem and the telling is the transmission, the transmission of the memory from generation to generation, the memory being: The water came. The water came over the levee and through the levee and around the levee and the water did not stop because the water does not stop, the water follows the law and the law is gravity and gravity is not negotiable, and the water covered the land and the land was gone and the being-gone was the flood, the flood being the absence of everything that was there before, the houses and the barns and the fences and the roads and the crops, all of it gone, all of it under the water that was not a river anymore but an ocean, an inland ocean, the ocean that the river becomes when the levee fails.

Marcel survived. He survived by climbing. He climbed to the roof of the barn and the barn held and the holding of the barn was the survival, the barn's structure sufficient to support the boy's weight above the water, the water rising to the barn's eaves and stopping, the stopping being the difference between life and death, the difference being inches, the inches that the barn provided, the inches that Marcel stood on while the water covered everything else.

Clem has thought about those inches his entire life. The inches between the water and the boy. The inches that are the margin. The margin that is the difference. The margin that the levee provides — not inches now but feet, thirty-two feet of compacted clay between the river and the parish, but the feet are the inches scaled up, the same margin, the same difference, the same question: Is it enough?

The question is the parish's permanent question. Is the levee enough? Is the engineering enough? Is the thirty-two feet enough? The answer, from the Corps of Engineers, is: Yes, the levee is designed to withstand a flood of record, the flood of record being the 1927 flood, the levee designed to contain what the old levees could not contain, the design being the engineering's promise, the promise that the new levees will not fail the way the old levees failed.

But the promise is an engineering promise, and engineering promises are probabilistic, not absolute. The levee is designed to withstand a certain level of flood. A flood beyond that level — a flood greater than the flood of record — would overtop the levee, and the overtopping would be the failure, and the failure would be the water coming over the top and down the landside and into the parish, the water doing what it did in 1927 but to a parish that is ninety-nine years more developed, more populated, more dependent on the levee's promise.

Clem does not think about this in terms of probability. He thinks about it in terms of the animals. He thinks about the cattle in the pastures behind the levee, Earl's cattle, four hundred head, the cattle that would be in the water if the levee failed, the cattle that cannot climb to the roof of a barn, the cattle that would stand in the rising water and the standing would not save them because the water would rise above the standing and the above-the-standing is the drowning, and the drowning is the thing that Clem cannot think about but that he thinks about anyway, on the levee, looking at the river, because the thinking is the vigilance and the vigilance is the price.

He thinks about the horses. Marie-Claire's horse, Dex. The horses that graze the pastures along the river road. The horses that would panic in the rising water, the panic being the horse's response to the thing that the horse's body knows is wrong, the water rising on the legs being the wrongness, the horse's instinct saying: Run, and the running being impossible because the water is everywhere and the everywhere is the flood and the flood is the thing that the levee prevents and the preventing is the thing that Clem stands on, the thirty-two feet of compacted clay that is the prevention.

He thinks about the goats. He thinks about Pearl, recovered from the pneumonia, back in the pasture, eating brush. He thinks about goats in a flood and the thinking produces the image that is both terrible and absurd, because goats in a flood are goats doing what goats do, which is climbing, the climbing being the goat's advantage, the goat being the animal most likely to survive a flood because the goat will climb anything — a fence, a roof, a car, a floating bale of hay — the goat's survival instinct being the goat's stubbornness applied to the ultimate problem, the problem of the rising water, and the stubbornness might save the goat and the saving would be the goat's victory, the victory of the ungovernable over the ungovernable, the goat's nature triumphing over the river's nature, both natures being the same nature, which is: I will do what I do regardless of what you want me to do.

He comes down from the levee. He gets in the truck. He drives north toward Waterproof. The levee is beside him, the grassy slope running along the road, the slope that is the wall, the wall that is the prayer, the prayer that is: Hold.

The parish watches the gauge. The gauge is monitored by the National Weather Service, by the Corps of Engineers, by the parish emergency management office, by the farmers who check it on their phones, by the old men who remember 1927 (not personally now, but through the stories, through the transmission, through the memory that lives in the telling), by the parish's collective attention that gathers around the gauge the way the collective attention gathers around a sick animal, with the focus and the worry and the helplessness of a community watching a number that it cannot control.

Forty-one feet. The number is stable. The number has been stable for three days, the stability meaning that the rain upriver has paused, that the tributaries are not adding volume, that the river's intake equals the river's output and the equality is the steady state, the state that the parish hopes for, the state that is: Not rising. Not rising is the prayer answered. Not rising is the levee holding without being tested. Not rising is the gauge steady and the margin steady and the parish steady on its flat green land behind its thirty-two-foot wall.

But the steadiness is not guaranteed. The weather upriver is not controlled. The rain comes when the rain comes. The tributaries rise when the tributaries rise. The Mississippi receives what the tributaries send and the Mississippi carries what it receives and the carrying is the rising and the rising is the testing and the testing is the levee's purpose, the purpose being: to hold when the holding is tested, to stand when the standing is challenged, to be the wall that the wall was built to be.

Clem drives through the parish. He passes the farms that sit behind the levee, the farms that exist because the levee exists, the existence being contingent, dependent, the dependency being the relationship between the farm and the levee that is the same relationship between the farm and the vet, which is: I depend on you for my survival, and the depending is the trust, and the trust is the relationship, and the relationship is the parish.

He stops at a farm north of Waterproof. A cow with a retained placenta, the placenta that should have been expelled after calving and that was not, the not-expelled being the problem, the placenta hanging from the cow like a flag, the flag that says: Something that should have come out has not come out, and the not-coming-out is the condition that requires the veterinarian.

He treats the cow. He administers the oxytocin. He gives the antibiotic to prevent the infection that the retained placenta invites, the infection that would enter the uterus through the exposed membranes and the exposed membranes being the vulnerability, the opening through which the outside enters the inside, the way the break in a levee is the opening through which the river enters the parish.

The farmer — a woman named Veronica Landry, forty-five, who runs eighty head on three hundred acres with her brother — asks Clem about the river. The river is the topic. The river is July's topic the way the heat is July's condition, the topic and the condition being the two things that the parish talks about and endures and monitors and worries over.

"You think it'll hold?" Veronica said.

The question. The question that everyone asks and that no one can answer and that the asking is the worry made verbal, the worry expressed as a question because the question implies the possibility of an answer and the answer implies the possibility of reassurance and the reassurance is the thing the questioner is seeking, the seeking being the human need for someone to say: It will hold. It will be fine. The levee is strong. The engineering is good. The margin is seven feet. The seven feet is enough.

"It's held for ninety-nine years," Clem said.

The answer is not reassurance. The answer is fact. The answer is the veterinarian's answer, the answer of a man who deals in facts and not in reassurances, because the facts are what the practice provides and the reassurances are what the practice cannot guarantee, the guarantee being the thing that neither medicine nor engineering can offer, the thing that would require a certainty that the world does not provide, the world providing instead the facts and the probabilities and the margins and the histories, and the histories say: It has held, and the has-held is the fact, and the fact is what Clem offers.

Veronica nods. She accepts the fact the way the parish accepts the facts, which is: with the understanding that the fact is not a guarantee, that the has-held does not mean will-hold, that the past's performance is not the future's promise, and the not-promising is the condition, the condition of living behind a wall, the condition that the parish has accepted for ninety-nine years and that the accepting is the choice, the choice to live here, on this land, behind this wall, beside this river, the choice that is not a single decision but a daily reaffirmation, the waking up in the morning and looking at the levee and choosing to stay.

Clem drives home. The levee accompanies him along the road, the grassy slope constant in his peripheral vision, the slope that is the wall that is the prayer that is the parish's relationship with the river, and the relationship is: We are here. You are there. The wall is between us. The wall holds. We trust the wall. We watch the gauge. We carry the memory. We live behind the wall and the living is the choice and the choice is the parish and the parish is home.

The gauge reads forty-one feet. The margin is seven. The levee holds.

Tomorrow the margin may be six. Or eight. Or seven still. The number will change or the number will not change and the changing or the not-changing will be the news and the news will be the topic and the topic will be the parish's conversation with itself, the conversation that is: Are we safe? And the answer that is: We are behind the levee. And the behind-the-levee is the answer and the answer is not a guarantee but it is what the parish has, and the having is the living, and the living is the faith, and the faith is the levee, and the levee holds.

Evening. The porch. The chairs. Renee and Clem and the sweet tea and the fan and the parish settling into the July night that does not cool but that darkens, the darkening being the evening's offering, the offering of reduced light if not reduced heat, the offering that the parish accepts the way it accepts all offerings, with the gratitude of a people who know that the offering is not everything they need but is something, and the something is sufficient, and the sufficient is the life.

The river moves in the dark. The river does not need light to move. The river moves by gravity and gravity operates in the dark the same way it operates in the light, without pause, without rest, the river's constancy being the thing that the parish lives beside and that the levee contains and that the containing is the work, the perpetual work, the work that does not end because the river does not end, the river moving south in the dark past the sleeping parish, past the levee that stands in the dark, past the gauge that reads forty-one feet in the dark, the number glowing on the digital readout that the camera transmits to the website that the farmers check on their phones before they sleep, the checking being the last act of the day, the last act being: Is the number the same? Is the margin the same? Is the levee the same?

The levee is the same. The levee holds.

The parish sleeps. The river moves. The margin is seven feet. Seven feet of air between the water and the top of the wall. Seven feet that are the difference between the parish as it is and the parish as it would be, the would-be being the flood, the flood that has not happened and that might not happen and that the might-not is the hope and the hope is the seven feet and the seven feet is the margin and the margin is the levee and the levee holds.

Hold.