Rising Tide. Part 17

Coolidge declined.

"Big Bill" Thompson, Republican mayor of Chicago, wired; Arthur O'Keefe, Democratic mayor of New Orleans, wired. The president of the Mississippi State Board of Development pleaded: "Earnestly urge that you personally visit flood sections of Mississippi.... Mississippi Valley needs your help now and only by personal inspection can you grasp the situation."

Coolidge declined.

Eight senators and four governors jointly and formally pleaded with him anew to come South, arguing that the public would be more responsive to the Red Cross if he did. From Greenville the governor of Mississippi begged a third time: "More than ever...I want again to appeal to you to come in person. Your coming would center eyes of nation and the consequent publicity would result in securing millions of dollars additional aid for sufferers."

Coolidge declined.

NBC asked him to broadcast a nationwide appeal through a historic radio hookup. (Hoover would make this and a later broadcast instead.) The Duluth Cosmopolitan Club asked him for a dozen signed photographs to auction off at a benefit for flood victims. Will Rogers asked him to "send me a telegram that I can read at our benefit for flood sufferers tomorrow night."

All these requests Coolidge declined.

For months the flood dominated the nation's newspapers. For months, every single day the New York Times New York Times ran at least one story on the flood. For nearly a month, every day it ran a flood story on page 1. It was page 1 in Seattle, page 1 in San Diego, page 1 in Boston, page 1 in Miami. In the interior of the country, in the Mississippi valley itself, the story was bigger. Newspaper editors later overwhelmingly named the flood the greatest story of 1927, even though on May 22, Charles Lindbergh had, temporarily, driven the flood off the front pages of their newspapers. ran at least one story on the flood. For nearly a month, every day it ran a flood story on page 1. It was page 1 in Seattle, page 1 in San Diego, page 1 in Boston, page 1 in Miami. In the interior of the country, in the Mississippi valley itself, the story was bigger. Newspaper editors later overwhelmingly named the flood the greatest story of 1927, even though on May 22, Charles Lindbergh had, temporarily, driven the flood off the front pages of their newspapers.

But if Coolidge did nothing, Hoover did everything. For months hardly a day pa.s.sed without his name appearing in a heroic and effective posture, saving the lives of Americans. He was the focus of newsreels, of magazine feature stories, of Sunday supplements. The flood influenced the treatment of him on other questions as well. Almost like the president, everything he did was news. Not counting flood-related stories, references to him in the New York Times New York Times tripled during the three-month period after the flood, compared to the three months before the flood. tripled during the three-month period after the flood, compared to the three months before the flood.

He and his staff tracked the stories around the country carefully. Twice and sometimes three times a week Hoover saw summaries of them. The report for Sat.u.r.day, May 14, read: "Since the last report on this subject, written 5/10, a further vast amount of publicity and editorial comment has been forthcoming. The number of editorials received which express approbation and appreciation of Mr. Hoover has reached 153.... This number represents only the editorials received here and doubtless there have been hundreds of others.... Hartford Courant contains the following pa.s.sage: 'The country admires Mr. Hoover and justly. The politicians do not appear to relish pushing him forward. Many people would be interested to see what he would do if made president, yet they are not apt to have the opportunity.'"

The May 17 summary noted: "The Magazine section of the New York Times [has] an article ent.i.tled, 'Again Hoover Does an Emergency Job'...;The Boise Idaho Statesman editorial called 'Hoover to the rescue' says, 'America is sold on the organizing and directing genius of Hoover.... No wonder this man, who is no skilled politician, no spell-binder, no campaigner, no leader of a political clique, is persistently and continually advanced as the logical man for the swivel chair behind the big desk in the...White House!' The Louisville KY Herald...says, 'That there's no man in the country today who can do the job as well, may, some are hinting, boost that gentleman's chances for a presidential nomination.'"

The summary of May 23 noted a Nashville Banner Nashville Banner editorial: "'There is no honor in the gift of the people of which [Hoover] is not worthy'; the Oakland editorial: "'There is no honor in the gift of the people of which [Hoover] is not worthy'; the Oakland Tribune Tribune tells of renewed talk from Washington concerning Mr. Hoover, due to his being once more in the public eye...'[H]e is the ablest and most efficient American in public life.... In personal fitness for the presidency there is no other American, even remotely, in Mr. Hoover's cla.s.s.'" tells of renewed talk from Washington concerning Mr. Hoover, due to his being once more in the public eye...'[H]e is the ablest and most efficient American in public life.... In personal fitness for the presidency there is no other American, even remotely, in Mr. Hoover's cla.s.s.'"

There was virtually no criticism of his role, although many papers attacked Coolidge. Yet the truth was not enough for Hoover. He had to embellish it. He had to be perfect, even if it required lying. In his second national radio address, just after the final creva.s.se in Louisiana, he said that three hundred had died before he took charge, then bragged: "I can state at once a positive fact which will give satisfaction to every American. We have not had, so far as we know, the loss of half a dozen lives since we undertook central control and coordination of all agencies of relief in this great catastrophe." Later he claimed even fewer deaths, saying, "Only three lives have been lost since the national organization initiated its action on April 20th."

He deserved credit for saving lives. Without the magnificent organization he created and led, certainly dozens, probably hundreds-and possibly thousands-more would have died.

But his claim was a lie. The lowest count of the dead after April 20 exceeded 150, including at least 83 after he personally took control in Memphis; probably many more had died. Fieser, fearing Hoover's claim would damage the credibility of the Red Cross, even warned him of his error. Hoover persisted in repeating it.

He believed he was as scientific and objective as engineering itself. He believed he made decisions based only upon facts and truth. He was lying, and most of all to himself. This flaw meant that every decision he made was built on sand. It would haunt him, but not yet.

In the meantime, the media chose not to confront him. He was a hero. Although papers across the nation had reported deaths on page 1 that clearly exceeded his claim, the staff-produced press summaries, which reported the rare negative comment, noted not a single complaint about his facts. Instead, it quoted an editorial appearing in the New York Telegram New York Telegram, the Youngstown Youngstown (Ohio) (Ohio) Telegram Telegram, and most other Scripps-Howard papers: "Unstinted praise can be offered the Secretary of Commerce for the work he already has performed in bringing order out of chaos.... Only 6 lives were lost after Hoover took hold...300 lives had been lost before Hoover reached the scene. There is a fine tribute in these figures."

Hoover had earlier said "the world lives by phrases," and called public relations "an exact science." The publicity and his image-making machine was doing its work. If on the eve of the flood Hoover had not even won mention as a presidential contender, now Hoover was precisely correct when he told his old friend from Stanford, Will Irwin, that, a.s.suming Coolidge did not seek the Republican presidential nomination, "I shall be the nominee, probably. It is nearly inevitable."

He would be the nominee, that was, unless some deus ex machina destroyed his chances. A scandal, for example, could make all the publicity he had received blow up in his face. The press was creating his candidacy; it could destroy it. And one potentially explosive scandal was threatening in Greenville, Mississippi. At its center lay LeRoy Percy and his son Will.

Part Six

THE SON.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

WILLIAM A ALEXANDER P PERCY would ultimately become a large figure in his own right. Cultured, charming, a hero in the Great War, a poet and writer, his autobiography would ultimately become a large figure in his own right. Cultured, charming, a hero in the Great War, a poet and writer, his autobiography Lanterns on the Levee Lanterns on the Levee remains in print half a century after publication. He would travel about the world, sponsor young artists and writers, make the Percy home in Greenville a salon visited by people of international renown, and encourage northern scholarship about the Delta. Dissatisfied with the quality of the local newspaper, he would recruit Hodding and Betty Werlein Carter to Greenville to start one that would win a national reputation. His influence would be felt even more directly by his adopted son and blood cousin Walker Percy, who would become a National Book Award-winning novelist, and by Walker's close friend, Civil War historian and novelist Shelby Foote. Historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown calls Will "the best of the Percys," "the subject of myths.... How effortless it was to idolize Will Percy." Betty Carter says simply, "Will Percy was a great man." remains in print half a century after publication. He would travel about the world, sponsor young artists and writers, make the Percy home in Greenville a salon visited by people of international renown, and encourage northern scholarship about the Delta. Dissatisfied with the quality of the local newspaper, he would recruit Hodding and Betty Werlein Carter to Greenville to start one that would win a national reputation. His influence would be felt even more directly by his adopted son and blood cousin Walker Percy, who would become a National Book Award-winning novelist, and by Walker's close friend, Civil War historian and novelist Shelby Foote. Historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown calls Will "the best of the Percys," "the subject of myths.... How effortless it was to idolize Will Percy." Betty Carter says simply, "Will Percy was a great man."

But if a large figure, Will Percy always felt dwarfed by his father. Short and slight, frail even and without his father's thick chest, he was also blond, blue-eyed, and strikingly handsome, even beautiful. Forty-two years old in 1927, his features retained a boyish appeal. Even several years later Walker Percy described him as "quick as a youth...the abiding impression was of a youthfulness." He had his father's charm and added his own. He could talk about poetry and music, recalls Foote, "in a way that made you not only know the reality of it, but also appreciate the beauty...in a way that made you wish the conversation would hurry up and get over with so you could go home and read Keats." He could also in an instant turn acerbic, wintry. Foote adds, "He could get as mad as anyone I've ever known in my life.... His anger was a fearsome thing to be around."

The anger came from a deeper torment. For Will Percy could not escape the weight of his name, nor of his father, nor of the fact that he filled a place in the world that was not his and that he did not want. He had "beautiful and terrible eyes, eyes to be careful around," Walker Percy said. "Yet now, when I try to remember them, I cannot see them otherwise than as shadowed by sadness." David Cohn, a writer and national Democratic Party figure in the 1950s, called him "the loneliest man I have ever known.... [Loneliness] sometimes hovered as an aura about his head as he presided at his own table bright with laughter."

To protect himself, all his life the son danced mannered and intricate steps around the father. He took those steps to insulate the life he clung to, a romanticized past-perhaps symbolically, he would never learn to drive a car-from the grit of reality. But the Mississippi River would send reality flooding through his world and mark the end of the life he romanticized. It would also mark failure, his own failure, and by his standards the failure of his father and their society as well. The lifelong dance of father and son is itself that story.

EVEN AS A YOUNG BOY, Will seemed to simultaneously embrace his heritage and seek something else. From the time of his birth, two months too soon after the marriage of LeRoy and Camille Bourges, his parents reciprocated his ambivalence. Will himself would note that his arrival "overjoyed no one," including "Father and Mother." Both parents always stood apart from him, distant. Will responded with reticence, a self-containment, a resistance. As a boy, he did not play baseball or take to horses or do mischief with the children of the black servants. He disliked fishing and found hunting "even more lacerating to [my] spirit." Instead, he loved flowers and books. Nor, as he grew older, did he take to the plantation, or to gambling, or to drinking, or to any of the social vices so much a part of his father's society.

Yet the father still dominated the son's life. He dominated it not with orders or rules or discipline, but with what Will saw as his perfection. "I had not loved Father deeply, though I had admired him boundlessly," he wrote. "It was hard having such a dazzling father; no wonder I longed to be a hermit." Many years later Will worshiped small pieces of his father that appeared in others; since his father hunted and fished, for example, Will, despite his aversion to both pursuits, called fishermen and hunters "the most gentle and understanding people in the world, and I suspect anyone who isn't one or the other." Will blamed every failing, including the distance between him and his father, on himself, saying, "I must have been a hard child to get close to."

Still, Will was a Percy, and therefore a warrior. If he shared none of his father's interests, he staked out his own ground and was determined to be worthy of him. He poured his pa.s.sion into perfection. Nothing less would suffice. As a teenager, he frowned on sin, resented his father's "unchurchliness," and told his Catholic mother he wanted to become a priest. (She was appalled.) Despite the fine schools in Greenville, he was privately tutored and refused to continue reading Oth.e.l.lo Oth.e.l.lo because it was "immoral." His religiosity, he said, "was anguish and ecstasy, but mostly anguish, to me.... I was determined to be honest if it killed me.... I wanted to be completely and utterly a saint; heaven and h.e.l.l didn't matter, but perfection did." because it was "immoral." His religiosity, he said, "was anguish and ecstasy, but mostly anguish, to me.... I was determined to be honest if it killed me.... I wanted to be completely and utterly a saint; heaven and h.e.l.l didn't matter, but perfection did."

His intensity reflected a kind of masochism, a self-flagellation, a ripping at one's own flesh. It was also pa.s.sionate and ferocious. With his life largely internal, he began writing poetry, which like his religiosity seemed ill suited to the son of the father. When Will was fifteen, his parents sent him away to a military school at Sewanee to become a man, but also gave him permission to enter the nearby University of the South at Sewanee instead if he qualified; he did, and began college.

By then, Will had a brother named LeRoy, six years younger and fashioned in their father's image. Outgoing, animated, everything that Will was not, young LeRoy rode his pony bareback, explored the black sections of town, and was what Will called him: "all boy, all st.u.r.dy, obstreperous charm." His parents doted on him; clearly he would be the one who would carry on the Percy tradition, thus releasing Will from it. Will himself called him "the swell brother who should be representing and perpetuating the name." But his father gave LeRoy a rifle. When he was eleven years old, another boy accidentally shot him with it, and he died. Crowds overflowed the house and yard for the funeral, while blacks lined the street outside the house paying tribute.

The death did not bring father and remaining son closer. They grieved separately. At the time, Will wrote a poem that included the line, "I am your son, and you have slain my brother." Such a critical thought about his father was rare. It only complicated their relationship further, for he still idolized his father.

His parents did not idolize him. He graduated from Sewanee at nineteen, then spent a year in Europe. In letters home he complained that he had not heard from them, complained of "this one-sided correspondence," wrote, "Mother Dear-it was certainly good to get your letter tonight after what seemed an interminable wait," and, later, "Mother Dear, Things are progressing very pleasantly except for the fact I haven't received a line from you or father."

He needed his parents then. Europe had awakened in him something he found hypnotizing and frightening. In the Louvre, he "was always happening upon a hermaphrodite, in some discreet alcove, and I would examine the sleazy mock-modest little monster with horror and fascination." And he became "sick for a home I had never seen and lonely for a hand I had never touched."

Fleeing from that loneliness, he returned home and submitted to his heritage. His father, grandfather, and two uncles were prominent attorneys. Will went to Harvard Law, even though his father had not pushed him to do so, and found no pleasure in it. For the new, other, greater distance between father and son was showing itself most obviously in his poetry.

IF W WILL'S POEMS have not endured, in his time he developed a sizable reputation. He became the editor of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, and his work was praised and solicited by such people as Allen Tate and John Crowe Ransom, leaders of the "Fugitives," southern poets who rejected industrial society in favor of a more honorable agrarian one. As an editor, he advised one poet: "[L]et your writing reflect only the wisdom of pain or of delight which life has most deeply revealed to you. Nothing else is worth your time or the time of any reader." He told a friend that poetry's "first requirement is sincerity and the single aim should be to write as though there were no audience other than the writer's own heart." have not endured, in his time he developed a sizable reputation. He became the editor of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, and his work was praised and solicited by such people as Allen Tate and John Crowe Ransom, leaders of the "Fugitives," southern poets who rejected industrial society in favor of a more honorable agrarian one. As an editor, he advised one poet: "[L]et your writing reflect only the wisdom of pain or of delight which life has most deeply revealed to you. Nothing else is worth your time or the time of any reader." He told a friend that poetry's "first requirement is sincerity and the single aim should be to write as though there were no audience other than the writer's own heart."

Many of his poems spoke of his father. With the one exception quoted above, in them his father was always heroic. In a poem t.i.tled "L.P.," he was asked: "'How many trees in your forest?' / 'One:'... / When storms run...the tree bows like Jacob wrestling with G.o.d.'" In another he wrote: "There is no certain thing I can lay hold on / And say, 'This, this is good! This will I worship!' / Except my father." In his autobiography Will defined himself, shortly before his death, as only a reflection, a son. It is subt.i.tled Recollections of a Planter's Son Recollections of a Planter's Son; in it he stated simply, "Father was the only great person I ever knew."

His poems also spoke of other things, and the single poem he cited as his truest was "Sappho in Levkas." It is a long poem, seventeen pages long. It sings of pa.s.sion. It also speaks of confusion, vacillation, anger, torment, and his father. In it, the narrator, ostensibly Sappho, becomes obsessed with a youth and, riveted by the boy's beauty, spies on him, dreams of him, and finally loves him. For loving him, the narrator trembles equally with love and self-hatred.

To think n.o.bility like mine could beFlawed-shattered utterly-and by...A slim, brown shepherd boy with windy eyesAnd spring upon his mouth!...Before Thine eyes to strip my pa.s.sion tillNaked its evil gleams...Drinking the poison of his loveliness...To see his bending body in the dance...That lithe and burning youth...Father, it seemed not evil then-so sweetHe was; and I, who, most of all the world,Loved purity and loathed l.u.s.t,Became the mark of my own scorning...Defeat or victory alike-is utter ruin...Oh, always beauty was to me,Thyself half seen, my Father...And this same beauty now betrayeth me...O home! O Lesbos!O G.o.ds, and grant this boon!Bear me back home to Lesbos and the boy!Steep me but one short hour in his love!...I would forswear song-beauty-Zeus, my father...I would long to beFreed from that loneliness men call esteem.

Sappho, he made clear, truly represented his heart, and other poems expressed similar desires. In one, he wrote longingly of "some young G.o.d, / With blown, bright hair and fillet golden, came / And stretching forth the blossoming rod of beauty / Upon me wrought a pagan spell." Such desires had to torture him.

Had it not been for his father, Will might have abandoned Greenville and his name, and freed himself from the loneliness of men's esteem. But worshiping his father, he could not do so. And having finished law school, he needed to begin his adult life. His father still would not embrace him. Though LeRoy advised one young man that Greenville was "the best place in the Delta for a young lawyer to start practicing," he confided to his brother, "I am considerably bothered about Will, whether to advise him to settle here or in Memphis. On his own account I am strongly inclined to Memphis."

But in 1910 Will did return to Greenville, and his father's law firm became Percy & Percy. Will was twenty-five years old. Meanwhile, LeRoy was bestowing his favor on his nephew, Will's first cousin, LeRoy Pratt Percy, a Birmingham attorney whose own father had killed himself with a shotgun. It was this nephew with whom LeRoy now hunted and gambled and joked. It was this nephew whom LeRoy now expected to carry on the family tradition. (The nephew, like his own father, would later kill himself.) The closeness between father and nephew, Will's cousin, must have reminded the son of his own failings. Will lived at home with his parents, and there was constant tension, violent arguments. He was not weak and could explode with ferocity and truculence. His tongue could keep even his father at bay. "But it wasn't fun," Will said. "I had attacks of nausea, but not of tears." At least some of the tension centered on his lack of interest in women. In an unpublished ma.n.u.script Will confessed: "My father and mother looked at me strangely.... My father said, 'It is in the spring that the seed is eager, is it not?' But my mother would cover his lips with her hands. 'Do not speak,' she would say, 'We do not know what we may be saying.'" In Greenville other people began to wonder why he did not marry, not quite saying something else.

He often returned to Europe. The Sicilian village Taormina became a favorite spot. There a German photographer had taken famous photographs of nude shepherd boys portrayed as satyrs and ancient Greeks, and English h.o.m.os.e.xuals who worshiped young male nudes had largely adopted the town. Will moved in their circle but could not embrace that life fully. Yet in Greenville there seemed nothing for him. He wrote his cousin and confidant Janet Dana Longcope: "I'm about convinced that my usefulness down here is ended, and certainly all chance for happiness is. From now on it would be a 'petering' out process, which of all things I most despise."

When the Great War began, he was in Taormina climbing Mt. Etna. The war, he told his cousin, was "the center of the world. To miss this war is to miss the opportunity of this century or to refuse the opportunity."

IN 1916, BEFORE the United States entered the war, Will went to Belgium to help run Hoover's food distribution program, along with other young Americans. At thirty-one he was one of the oldest there. the United States entered the war, Will went to Belgium to help run Hoover's food distribution program, along with other young Americans. At thirty-one he was one of the oldest there.

Suddenly, for the first time, Will was eclipsing his father, who had never been to war. Their relationship changed. The day Will left for Europe, LeRoy wrote John Sharp Williams, who was still in the Senate, advising him on strategy for a flood control bill and confessed, "That boy of mine has gone to Belgium today and I am lonesome."

When America declared war, Will came home and joined the Army. In France he continued to write poems and sent them home. LeRoy was proud enough to show some to Williams, who in turn showed them to the president. Wilson commended them. LeRoy also sent some of Will's letters to the Memphis Commercial-Appeal Memphis Commercial-Appeal, which published them.

More interesting were the letters LeRoy kept to himself. "Dear Father," Will wrote in the summer of 1918. "There were patches of blue corn-flowers which always remind me of mother's eyes. I lost all interest in field of fire...and sniffed the air and watched the very blue distant hills and before the morning was over nearly lost my job for sheer incompetence. Being competent is certainly a difficult matter, and, when the world strikes you as particularly lovely, impossible.... When I go up front and see the handful of youngsters that stand immediately between us and the enemy-so full of spirit and so completely 'on their own,' I return with an awful sense of their warm flesh.... My work, I suppose, will always be among the chess-players at the top, but my game will never be a good one for I'll never be able to think of the pieces as p.a.w.ns. And as yet, I haven't seen any of the real horror."

His father, both of them knew, could see soldiers as p.a.w.ns. And Will would soon see the real horror; in combat he would remain cool, determined, and controlled.

Barely a month later, he wrote: "Dear Father,...To be sh.e.l.led when you are in the open is one of the most terrible of human experiences. You hear this rushing, tearing sound as the thing comes toward you and then the huge explosion as it strikes, and, infinitely worse, you see its hideous work as men stagger, fall, struggle or lie quiet and unrecognizable. A company broke and I saw a colonel trying to rally and direct them. So I joined him and took over the company.... It was a vivid, wild experience and I think I went through it calmly by refusing to recognize it as real. You couldn't see men smashed and killed around you, and bear it except by walking in a sort of sleep, as you might read Dante's Inferno. The exhilaration of battle-there's no such thing, except perhaps in a charge. It's simply a matter of will power. As for being without fear, I met no such person under this barrage, though men played their part as if they were without it."

It was a far cry from the ecstasy Andrew Humphreys had felt at Fredericksburg. Will took pride in his performance, writing his mother, "honor I deserved," but he took no pleasure in it. He had only done his duty. After the Armistice he wrote, "Dear Father,...This war will furnish the material for great literature for generations to come, but I'm afraid my mould is not heroic enough or else I've seen it from too near to be able to turn the horror into beauty."

He returned as a captain with the Croix de Guerre and gold and silver stars. Father and mother were proud and met him at the dock in New York. He had been to a place his father envied and could not reach. Their relationship had matured and mellowed. They became closer. Will returned home and resumed living in the family mansion on Percy Street. He and his father walked to work together each day, and talked. Will later said, "Of all my experiences, our daily walks...are those I least want to forget."

But they had only built a bridge across a chasm between them. The two did not so much see things differently; they saw different things. Ironically, Will, who had been through a war that made most intellectuals bitter cynics, remained the romantic. And as if to compensate for what he must have regarded as his own personal evil, in Greenville he continued to insist on moral perfection and condemned scandal. LeRoy, perhaps remembering the timing of his own marriage, tolerated human weakness and condemned no one. LeRoy understood pa.s.sion; Will endured it.

They viewed blacks differently as well. LeRoy saw all men, including blacks, as pieces in a larger game. It was almost entirely a question of economics to him, and he could accept an individual Negro as a man, if not a social equal. But then he accepted few whites as social equals. He wrote John Sharp Williams: "The negroes are going to leave the South gradually more and more until the standard of wages is raised throughout the South more nearly to the level of what it is elsewhere. When the negroes once scatter throughout the United States, there would cease to be any sectional or local negro issue, and any issue there would be, would be an issue between the whites and blacks throughout the entire country."

Will had less tolerance for racial differences than his father. In 1921, while LeRoy lobbied former Senate colleagues against all immigration restrictions, Will wrote Williams, "I can't see why we should not adopt a definite policy for the exclusion of Orientals." His feelings about blacks were far more complex, beginning with a naive paternalism. In his autobiography he claimed that the Delta was settled as "slaveholders began to look for cheap fertile lands farther west that could feed the many black mouths dependent on them." His father would have considered absurd the idea that slave owners moved hundreds of miles for the good of their slaves.

Will did protect blacks out of a sense of n.o.blesse oblige. He stopped wearing a hat because that meant tipping it to a white woman but not to a black, and later would have blacks-such as the poet Langston Hughes-as guests in his home, an extraordinary occurrence in the South of the time. Yet, unlike his father, he had difficulty seeing an individual black as a full man. To Will blacks were unknowable, primal. Their mystery and darkness drew him. He wondered, "[W]hat can a white man, north or south, say of them that will even approximate the truth?" He envied "their obliterating genius for living in the present" and noted, "The Negro's moral flabbiness is both his charm and his undoing."

He certainly knew of the liaisons between white men and black women, many semipermanent, and of the huge house on Blanton Street called "The Mansion," where nice clean colored girls entertained white gentlemen. He disapproved, even while suffering his own pa.s.sion, even while continuing to travel around the world to pursue-and evade-his own dark places and the hunger that repelled him. He wrote a poem about Taormina, home of the dark-skinned young shepherd boys. In the Delta, blacks presented an opaque smiling face to whites, but they were everywhere, unnoticed but knowing everything about whites. Some, it was rumored, might know Will far too well. He called his black personal servant in Greenville "my only tie with Pan and the Satyrs and all earth creatures who smile sunshine and ask no questions and understand." Sometimes self-disgust filled him. In his poem "Medusa," he spoke of "turn[ing] to stone with terror of facing quietly a flawless mirror."

Yet he demanded respect, and got it. He was after all a Percy. But his father had never demanded respect; he had commanded it. So had LeRoy's father, William Alexander Percy, after whom Will had been named.

Indeed, by the time the first William Alexander was forty-two, he had led a regiment in war, reorganized the state's levee system, faced down a mob to stop a lynching, led the "Redemption" of the county, started a railroad, and served as Speaker of the state legislature. By the time LeRoy himself was forty-two, he had brought railroads to the Delta, hunted with the president, maneuvered with and against the Mississippi River Commission, run plantations totaling 30,000 acres, negotiated with the mayor of Rome for Italian immigrants, defended Negroes against white demagogues, advised such financiers as J. P. Morgan, and become the strongest figure in the Delta and one of the strongest in the South.

Will was known only for being his father's son, even while others of his generation had emerged as leaders, such men as Billy Wynn, also a captain in the war whose law office was in the same building as Percy & Percy. Five years earlier when LeRoy had confronted the Klan, Will had stood beside him, always steadfast, always courageous, yet still in the shadows. Even in the midst of that battle he had been busy filling their library with delicate and exquisite volumes, conducting a warm correspondence with bookshops in New York: "I understand that Harper's has published the first volume of Elie Faure's History of Art, translated by Walter Pach. Won't you please get this for me? Have you been able to find 'Nostrom' yet?...The dark blue limp leather edition is the one I like best."

He had accepted a few community tasks, such as raising money for good causes. Fellow alumnus Monte Lemann of Monroe & Lemann in New Orleans convinced him to raise money for Harvard Law School. And he became chairman of the Washington County Red Cross. He disliked asking for contributions, but it was his duty and he realized that only with difficulty did someone in the county refuse a Percy.

The Mississippi River had abruptly changed everything. Now, in the emergency, he suddenly had real responsibility. Now the mayor of Greenville, after a conversation with LeRoy, named Will head of a special flood relief committee. The appointment, coupled with his chairmanship of the county Red Cross, gave Will near absolute control over the county during the emergency, and over the care of tens of thousands of refugees. The job would require more of Will than he had ever given anything except his poetry. It would also put everything that mattered to him at risk.

It would be Will's chance to prove himself a true Percy, and to learn precisely what that meant. What he did would have an impact far beyond the Delta, on the nation at large.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

THE M MOUNDS L LANDING LEVEE broke at seven-thirty on the morning of April 21. While Greenville waited for the water to reach the city's rear protection levee, the city was in panic. Few fled by car, afraid of being caught by the water on the flat Delta land, but trains out of the city were packed. Grocery stores and wholesale suppliers of every imaginable good were packed. Meanwhile, late that morning, Will, representing the Red Cross, went to the Opera House, a three-story building one block from the levee, and sat down with Will Whittington, the Delta's congressman, General Curtis Green, head of the Mississippi National Guard, A. G. Paxton, the local National Guard commander, and Billy Wynn, a rising power in the county, to plan for the disaster. Even if Greenville remained dry, refugees from the rest of the county would inundate it. Will was nominally in charge, but the meeting was disorderly and chaotic. Paxton spoke first. He was short and officious, and he loved the military (a general in Korea, his men nicknamed him "Bullwhip Shorty"). He stated that he had "commandeered" the building where they were meeting, and spoke of a.s.signing labor battalions as though he were moving armies about. The congressman uselessly promised to demand federal aid. Green arranged for more men and materiel to hold the protection levee. Wynn did the most useful thing: he took responsibility for setting up kitchens for refugees. When the meeting adjourned, Will returned home and began working on his poetry. He would write feverishly deep into that night. He knew it could be his last opportunity for weeks. broke at seven-thirty on the morning of April 21. While Greenville waited for the water to reach the city's rear protection levee, the city was in panic. Few fled by car, afraid of being caught by the water on the flat Delta land, but trains out of the city were packed. Grocery stores and wholesale suppliers of every imaginable good were packed. Meanwhile, late that morning, Will, representing the Red Cross, went to the Opera House, a three-story building one block from the levee, and sat down with Will Whittington, the Delta's congressman, General Curtis Green, head of the Mississippi National Guard, A. G. Paxton, the local National Guard commander, and Billy Wynn, a rising power in the county, to plan for the disaster. Even if Greenville remained dry, refugees from the rest of the county would inundate it. Will was nominally in charge, but the meeting was disorderly and chaotic. Paxton spoke first. He was short and officious, and he loved the military (a general in Korea, his men nicknamed him "Bullwhip Shorty"). He stated that he had "commandeered" the building where they were meeting, and spoke of a.s.signing labor battalions as though he were moving armies about. The congressman uselessly promised to demand federal aid. Green arranged for more men and materiel to hold the protection levee. Wynn did the most useful thing: he took responsibility for setting up kitchens for refugees. When the meeting adjourned, Will returned home and began working on his poetry. He would write feverishly deep into that night. He knew it could be his last opportunity for weeks.

While he wrote, the water reached David Cober's house outside the city. Cober remembers: "We heard this storm coming through the woods. It wasn't a storm. It was the water." It came in as rolling surf first, five-foot-high breakers, crashing against the house; the house shook under the attack, then the water rose. "Our house was six or seven feet off the ground. The water came in fourteen or fifteen feet deep." The house had only one story; water entered and forced them to stand on tables. It kept rising. In the darkness of the night, Cober dove down into the swirling water looking for an ax, kept diving until he found it, then hacked a hole in the roof and his family climbed out onto it.

The Greenville protection levee stood eight feet high. The water paused briefly, then ripped the levee apart as smoothly as if unzipping it. The fire whistle went off. The sound was, Will said, "like zero made audible."

THEN CAME THE CHAOS. Water roared and hissed, the fire whistle blasted, church bells clanged, animals barked and neighed and bellowed in terror. In Newtown, the black neighborhood closest to the protection levee, hundreds of families began to wade through the rising water to the Mississippi levee, the highest ground in the Delta. Twenty-five hundred others fled to the courthouse, packed it tight. The water rose quickly to 3 feet, 5 feet, 8 feet, dark churning water, chocolate with brown foam. The currents poured into downtown, sweeping the streets empty. "Water was just rolling in, like you see the waves down in Gulfport," recalled Jesse Pollard. "They were high-you saw horses and cows floating. If you were standing on the levee, you could see people floating who had drowned. It was a sight you never forget."

One last train tried to escape. But outside the city the creva.s.se water was roaring over the railroad embankment, washing it away in its entirety, leaving the rails turned upright like a picket fence. A mile beyond the city limits the train derailed. It would remain there, a twisted Gargantua lying helpless, for months.

In the Percy home, father and son were on the phone long before dawn, collecting information, tracking the water, locating food supplies and boats, contracting for boats to be built. Now in the early daybreak, LeRoy told his son wearily, "Guess you better go while you can. I'll be along." Will headed for a meeting with the relief committee in the poker room of the Knights of Columbus hall. Then his mother, Camille, and the cook went out to gather what final groceries they could find.

LeRoy was finally alone. He had spent his life building the Delta. His two greatest adversaries had always been the river and the shortage of labor. The river was invading his home now, snaking down his street, Percy Percy Street, flooding his garden, overflowing his tennis court-the only one in the city-climbing the steps of his porch. And he knew the river would send blacks flooding north, stripping the Delta of labor. Street, flooding his garden, overflowing his tennis court-the only one in the city-climbing the steps of his porch. And he knew the river would send blacks flooding north, stripping the Delta of labor.

The life he had known was dying. It had been so at least since Vardaman had so bitterly defeated him. He expected it to die. But if he was fatalistic, he had never simply yielded to fate. One did all that one could. He could do nothing about the river. But he could still control men. He picked up the telephone.

He first tracked down the governor and said he wanted the state to guarantee Delta banks that any funds expended for relief would be repaid. Murphree agreed. Then Percy got on the phone to New York bankers and began soliciting money, both as contributions and loans.

Meanwhile, Will and the relief committee were trying to establish order. They needed to take charge of boats, food supply, drinking water, kitchens, lights, transportation, sanitation, police. But there were crossed lines of authority, not enough resources, not enough food, no shelter for the refugees.

Rescuers were depositing thousands of refugees from all over the Delta on the levee, to join the city's own thousands already there. Farmers moved cattle, mules, horses, and pigs to the levee as well. The Mississippi River lay on one side, the flood on the other. The levee crown was only 8 feet wide, its landside slope an additional 10 to 40 feet wide before touching water. A line of people already stretched north from downtown for more than a mile.

At midday LeRoy called his son, who dispatched a boat to take him to the relief headquarters. LeRoy's presence mattered. People too busy to come to the phone for Will or Paxton came to the phone for him. Though Will nominally gave the orders, Hunter Kimbrough, who stayed in the Percy home for the first ten days of the flood, recalls, "Senator Percy was in charge." Despite the shortage of boats, LeRoy had a 17-foot motorboat, a driver, and a mechanic a.s.signed to him personally. That first day he, Will, Billy Wynn, and Paxton decided to declare "voluntary" martial law. They had no legal authority to do so. The mayor had no role in the decision, nor the city council, nor the county board of supervisors. But the next edition of the newspaper announced: "All citizens of Greenville, all refugees...and all property necessary in Relief work are subject to orders from this [National Guard] headquarters.... Disobedience will not be tolerated." The authority came from the signatures: Will, as chairman of the Washington County Relief Committee, T. R. Buchanan, the Red Cross relief expert a.s.signed to the county, and LeRoy for "the Citizens."

Martial law solved little. Virtually the entire county was underwater, as much as 20 feet of water. The current everywhere was ferocious. People took shelter in railroad boxcars, in the upper stories of cotton gins, oil mills, houses, and barns. Thousands clung to roofs or trees, or sat on the levee awaiting pickup. The rain and cold continued. By the second day after the creva.s.se, despite the several thousand, nearly all whites, who fled the city, refugees pushed Greenville's normal population of 15,000 to nearly 25,000. Every hour rescuers were bringing hundreds more in from around the county. Twenty-five thousand more people were scattered around the rest of the county. The city was cut off from supply. The National Guard had only 5,000 rations.

By now five miles of the narrow levee were crammed with refugees, almost all of them there black, and refugees were still pouring in. Thousands of head of livestock extended farther. The number of refugees and livestock would keep growing. Without shelter or dry clothes in the continuing rain, with temperatures dropping into the forties at night, with only the sparest of rations, the refugees stood in mud, sat in mud, slept in mud. The Greenville Democrat-Times Greenville Democrat-Times reported: "Flood conditions continue to grow worse in Greenville as refugees continue to be brought in from outlying sections and are huddled in every available s.p.a.ce.... Cold weather added to the suffering as food and water supply here becomes lower." reported: "Flood conditions continue to grow worse in Greenville as refugees continue to be brought in from outlying sections and are huddled in every available s.p.a.ce.... Cold weather added to the suffering as food and water supply here becomes lower."

The situation was becoming life-threatening. Rumors began to spread of sickness, of a possible epidemic. An urgent call for typhoid serum went out. Dogs swarmed over the levee; without food or their owners, they were barking endlessly and rapidly turning wild, making rabies a real threat. The levee was a madhouse. General Malin Craig, commander of the Army's IV Corps in Atlanta, was unsympathetic to the refugees in general and shipped out tents and field kitchens only reluctantly, at a n.i.g.g.ardly pace. But even he warned the War Department: "Conditions Greenville area critical."

Rescue barges already full began squeezing white women and children aboard in Greenville to take them to Vicksburg, where they could make rail connections elsewhere or remain in well-organized camps. The barges also removed some of the blacks to Vicksburg. Yet Greenville's population continued to grow as even more refugees arrived.

Then the city water supply became contaminated and useless. An a.s.sociated Press dispatch reported, "The situation here, with the water supply gone, most of the food destroyed, and...ten thousand...camping on the levee, was desperate." Will, as chairman of the relief committee, had tried to respond. He had just sent out an urgent plea for 20,000 loaves of bread. But even if bread came, the logistic problems were long-term, not short-term. The flood had cut off the city for weeks, possibly months. Without rail connections, supplying Greenville would be nearly impossible.

The most obvious solution was to evacuate the refugees. But evacuation would denude Washington County of its labor supply, particularly sharecroppers. They would have nothing to return to. Most of them had with them on the levee the little they had been able to salvage before the flood washed their homes away. All that remained were their debts to the planters. It could take years to replace the croppers. They might never be replaced.

The question of evacuation went to the essence of Will's concept of a worthy aristocracy, of n.o.blesse oblige, even of honor. Keeping the refugees on the levee risked their lives. There was no question of what was right, and therefore no choice.

Yet a decision of such import had to have at least the appearance of broad support. Will did not consult Paxton, a cotton broker, or Wynn. He consulted only his Red Cross committee, Percy loyalists. Its vice chairman was Judge Emmet Harty, another bachelor who had gone to war with Will and was his closest friend in Greenville, and its members included Charlie Williams, who ran the Percy cotton compress, and Will Hardie, the manager of Percy's Trail Lake Plantation. "Whatever Senator Percy wanted, that's what white folks in this county did," says the son of another committee member, B. B. Payne.