They stood on the shore, watching the waters lap at the edge. A man preached salvation from the boat, his voice amplified in reflection across the water. Being people with great knowledge of their trades but little formal education, the crowd was not, shall we say, transfixed by his words. Their concerns were more temporal, given the night they had just lived through. What would their children eat? And once we get today’s needs met, how will we meet tomorrow’s? Such struggling day-to-day gets old, and the man’s promises to get them out did not ring true.
William Percy returned to his father, telling him that the sharecroppers on the levy had to be evacuated. He had found river boats to transport them to Greenville or Memphis. Once the flood was over, they could come back. Once the flood was over, the planters would need the labor to get their fields back into shape. The planters had no faith that the sharecroppers, once they had started a trip north, would ever return. These people, their labor, was the planters’ capital for all intents and purposes. No matter what the 13th Amendment said, they could not be allowed to go. Percy’s father said no; dysentery, disease, and starvation plagued the people on the levy, and William’s faith was shattered.
Before 1927 there was 27, or somewhere there abouts. On the shores of Lake Genneserat, Mary and Joseph’s boy preached salvation to laborers. Their capital was in their boats and nets, not the labor of others, yet they feared for tomorrow after a night with no catch. They listened but did not hear the words of the preacher until he told them to drop their nets one more time and proved that in matters temporal they would always be ok. Now it was time to abandon their capital, to let go of what had not been theirs in the first place. It would be like telling Charlie Parker to go pawn his horn, not an easy thing to do or to live with.
Percy looked back on the courage of those fishermen. He looked at where it took them: crucified upside down, homeless in Patmos. Not exactly the sweetness and light we were hoping for. But at the end, Percy hopes, their pursuit of justice brought them peace, a peace which cannot be bought or built with all the resources in the world. Their capital blown away, they were left with what was real.