The storm had come in from the north and knocked down power lines all the way from Greenville to the Grace Post Office. It was 1944, and people knew what to do when that happened. Even before the lights went out, Jimmy’s great-grandmother got out six lanterns and set them in a line on the dining room table. She filled them with oil and lit them with long matches carved out of fat pine. Jimmy took cushions from the porch furniture and carried them into the front hall and then stood with his grandfather in the door to watch the rain watering the fields. They needed a new roof for the house. If the cotton made, they could buy asphalt shingles. If not, they would patch the roofs with long, flat tiles made of cypress. Jimmy had helped fell the big cypress tree they cut last summer. He had heard it fall and felt the soft delta earth shake beneath his feet as it did. The night’s rain had been enough to fill the river above which he was standing now, on the long silver bridge built by the WPA.
