Henry Dumas

Editor's Note: Nearly 38 years have passed since Henry Dumas, one of the brightest lights in the pantheon of American writers was shot down and killed on the streets of East St. Louis, Illinois. He had he lived, he would have been 71 years old this year. Asili through the good graces of Loretta Dumas and Eugene B. Redmond has attempted to keep this great creative spirit alive in these pages. Dumas' impact on American and especially African American letters is incalculable.

ARK

THAT'S HOW I was saved from the water in the flood of 1937. That's how it was. I was tied to a rope that was tied to a tree
holding firm in a fieldand the rope was beingpulledby Jubal who was floatingon a log and allthe time their voicesyelledin
the back,"Pull that line, boy. Hold tight. Hold tight. He gotcha! Hold tight.Pullthat line,Jubal.Pullthat line." I dont remembermuch about how I got from the water back into the boat again.I just rememberwakingup, mouth full of water,eyes full of water, and I was beating at the water with my arms, trying to shout and grunt but choking on the water, and then grabbing onto the line and holding on for life. Then they were pullingme up into the boat by my arms-I found out later who helped me in, just as I found out later from Jubal what
happened getting me in the boat-and then all of a sudden I heard myself saying, "MMMMMMMMMammmma."

They took care of me. I had brought them a boat and saved them, and they took care of me. There they were, my new family, Jubal Soloman, Ruby Soloman Masterson,Aunt Lili Hawkins, Mamada Masterson, Papa Masterson, I rememberbeing covered with
a smelly blanket and looked at by two dark faces.The boat was good and crowded.There were five of them on it, and they brought all their belongings too. They salvaged enough animals to run a farm: there were two pigs;old Poor Dog was still on shivering next to me, gazing at me wistfully as if to ask me why areyou letting all this happen.Chickens were all over the place.Nobody had seenfit to coop them up. They were fallingoff into the water everyso often. Too weak and beaten to try to fly to a log or a snag ,they just toppled off or jumped out of the way of somebody polin the boat and went over. Once I saw Jubal trying to save one that had jumped off right near whereI was lying.

I lay there under the blanket, feeling weak and dizzy.But I had not drowned and I could see things again.The fever was gone. I looked at Jubal. He was a kid about my age, but I thought he was older. He wasnt any bigger than I was, but he acted like a boy mucholder.I figuredhimto be ten or more,but he was only seven,same as I was, and if there was anything about him that stood out, it was his silence and his slow movements. I watched him leaning over me. For a moment I thought he was winking at me. I tried to raise up a bit to see him reaching his pole out to guide the drowning chicken to the boat. "Little bit more," he was saying,"little bit more." And I felt him lunge over me to grab at the chicken.And then the little girl, Ruby, who I hadnt seen good either, came over on her knees to me.

"I fellin off the barn roof this mornin," she said to me.

I looked at her. She was shon-haired,dark, and her eyes were filled with wonder. I could tell she wanted to tell me more. Jubal had put the chicken in the bow of the boat where his mother and the aunt and stepfather were polin. Then he had come and stood beside me with a pole. The boat was moving along now in a swift current,and we had to be careful not to hit trees and snags and other objects.Everybody but Ruby and me were polin. lwanted to get up and pole, but I was too weak. The pressure of the blanket wrapped around me was enough to hold my arms to my sides.Ruby, still talking to me about when she had fallen in and Jubal and Mamada had fished her out, began to tuck the edges of the blanket in.

"What you doin?"I asked.
"Lay still."she said.
"I want to get a pole and help."
"You lay still or I'm gonna tell Mamada."
"Who?"
"My Mama."
"Where is she?'!
"She polin. See that long pole?"

I could see the outline of the people and the poles. The boat wasnt that big, about thirty feet long and about ten feet wide. It was a flat bottom johnboat built of cypress logs and planks. In the center was the beginnings of a shed, which Old Man Hearth had never fInished. It began to come to me then that they had rescued me from the water. I couldnt remember too much before then, except that something terrible to know waited out there in the miles and miles of flood, something that wasgoing to take shape, many shapes, and haunt me for the rest of my life.

I lay there. In the back of my mind was the feeling of Jubal's silence. Ruby sat there, rubbing the blanket, helping me,
but I knew that the flood had come and done something very terrible to me.

"Where's my mama?" I asked.
"She muSt be on another boat," said Ruby.
"This is the only boat she know about."
"There's plenty boats. And house tops and roofs and everything.
I fell off the roof this morning. . ."

The boat swirled and dipped in an eddy. The current was getting Stronger as the river continued to rise. The tops of trees barely showed now above the vaStsea in front of us. I began to get up, trying to see the destruction passing by. The trees that were able to hold to the ground looked like the shaking fingers of a swimmer clutching the air in that momentary period before going down to the bottom, and the floating trees-caught in the musclesof the river current-were helpless ships, drifting toward the edge of the world.

I remember that I was terribly frightened at that time, looking in the liquid pools of Ruby's eyes, eyes which I was to learn
how to read later on as my new sister grew older, There was something in the edge of the circles which always made me look,
watching for something not there or not apparent. Just as she remained until we grew older, Ruby then, the first day on the river, did not recognize that fearful something in my voice, and if she did, she was just as afraid of it as I was. Crawling on hands and knees over a pile of rags, she turned and went away from me. "I fell off the roof and went under, and Jubal, him and Ma. mada done fIShedme out just like they did you." And she was out of my sight. Only her voice whimpered in my ears. I remember that, because it was then that the terrible feeling of being lost and without any clothes engulfed me.

Tears welled up in my eyes. I began to callmy mother, calling her even when I called my father, and all of sudden I was looking in the face of Mamada, and she was rubbing me with damp rough hands that I knew so well. Her facewas drawn, the blackness was almost drained from it. I could see that haunted look of fear in her eyes. The flood had put fear and death in the eyes of every living creature. then I saw it I burst into tears, and she leaned over the wet blankets wrapped around me,"What's matter, big boy, you let a little ole Sippi water scare you? Look at my Jubal yonder. It dont scare him none," and I could not cry any longer. There was something else in Mamada's face, something that I had never seen before. Her eyes were like Jubal's, slanted ever so slightly upward, and there was a piercing quality about them, not like little Ruby's big round saucers, but a distant gaze, as if she could always see far off. I don't remember what she told me then about what happened to my mother. At that time she didnt actually know, but the rise had taken so much that it was easy for her to surmise that it had taken my folks, just like it had taken Old Man Hearth and all those pigsand cows we saw.

Down the current we went. Somehow she made "me believe that I could soon get up and help pole the raft with Jubal. I
looked over at him. "You might be a bit taller than Jubal, but you aint ate no meat, cause your muscle slow." She squeezed
me under the blankets.I wantedto get up andscanthe river,polin and polin till I found them safe on a barn top or our old house
top. Mimada's strong arms picked me up and put me in a dryer spot under the shed, which was already getting the smell of
chicken manure.

"Good for drivin out that fever," she said.

I heard Papa Lem hollering, and Mamada crawled out and gother pole. He keep on hollering and I could see him wave a couple of times. They had spotted somebody in the flood, stranded. And everybody was polin except Ru by, me and Aunt Lill, who was lying quiet lyin the comer of the shed, shivering and whimpering, as if she were having a chill.If I had not seen the blankets moving, and eard her voice muffled beneath the wet air, I would not have believed she was alive.But when I finally managed to lean my head over to get a look at her face,I saw that she was wide-eyed and that lookof terror which had so frightened me when I saw it, was consuming her face as if it were some kind of an invisible flood itself over her dark skin. She was about twenty years old then, but as I remember Aunt Lili she looked like a woman of fifty.Eventhe shouts from the outside did not arouse her. Something had washed her soul away. About then I struggled out of the blankets and began to crawl,bumping into a pig,which backed away,staring me in the eyes.And when I stood up I saw out over the distance a lighted figure motioning vigorously and seated on a horse-no, he was standing beside the white horse.Both seemed to be standing on the water, but actually they were ankle deep in a floating island, which was slowly breaking up and giving in to the relendess river.All I remember about him at first was that he was holding a white horse,he was lime and he was white.

All of sudden Papa Lem was beside me. He was saying something to Aunt Lili,s omething I will never recall,but whatever it was it didn't make her stir. He looked at me, and said "Son, what's your name?. . . old man Noah must have been your father." and he was pulling out the rope which Jubal had placed under the shed. I could see Jubal now through Papa Lem's arms,and he was trying to steer the boat. I remember telling him my name was John, but he didnt seem to hear; he kept on talking to himself as well as to Mamada, and he was saying that God had sentthe ark after them. That's how I got the name Jonoah. My name was John then, but I dont remember what my family's last name was exactly; sometimes I think it was Hearth, then I think it was Barber,or Herbert or Berth.I was too young, and we had never had much cause for last names.I was John. My mother was Maylene, and I think my father's name was Jake. Anyway Papa Lem rushes back, steering the boat now, and calling me little John Noah. Neither he nor I nor anyone else on the boat then knew that we would become a family,and that what we did for the next few months would be the basis for Jubal and me becoming brothers, Ruby and me becoming brother and sister,and Dog Whidow being the man I hated,the man who later in my life took on the concentration of my hatred, took the head waters of my fear and loathing, and by doing so helped me to see how utterly helpless a human being becomes in the face of built-in hatred, a tradition-bound hatred, how utterly and hopelessly dependent one becomes,how useless and senseless it is to hate a river,and how terribly easy it is for a human being to pretend to be naked.

How were any of us to know then that the next few months would mold us into a family that would some day accuse America with its blood? How were we even to guess then who our enemy was . . . or real enemy, that is. I hated the river.And I later learned to hate Dog Whidow in Arkansas.But they were not the real enemies then. Enemies of the body yes, but not the soul, a thing which we were looking for, a thing which river people said would get lost in the swamps if a body stayed on the river too long.

©2007 by Eugene B. Redmond and Loretta Dumas