1
“Would you want to be an extra in the movie?” Tinkie Bellcase Richmond asks as we walk down Main Street in Greenville, Mississippi. We’ve come to the river town to scope out the new Trinity Studios production of Hero at the Helm, an action thriller about the 1927 Mississippi River flood.
For the first time in ages, Greenville is hopping with streets jammed and businesses going strong. The entire Mississippi Delta is abuzz with celebrity gossip and speculation. The nine-figure Hollywood production is filming right in our backyard, and Tinkie and I have been seduced by the possibility of movie magic. Our friends Millie Roberts and Cece Dee Falcon have been reporting on the movie for the past two months, and at long last the film crew is in town. Lights, camera, action! It’s happening.
“I wouldn’t mind being an extra in an action film.” My true love is the stage, but I put that dream aside long ago. Still, a few scenes in a movie about the history of my state would be fun. Especially if I get to pretend to drown or something dramatic.
“I want to be a tavern wench,” Tinkie says.
I burst into laughter. Tinkie is the Queen Bee of Delta society. She knows every rule in the Daddy’s Girl handbook of conduct and etiquette. “A tavern wench?”
“I like those little corsets the wenches wore.”
“The flood was in 1927, not 1827,” I remind her.
“I could still be a hot tavern girl. It’s Hollywood.”
I can’t argue that point. Films are great fictions created to entertain. “Okay. Then I want to be a female pirate.”
“You could train that black raven that’s taken up with you to ride on your shoulder. Like a pirate’s parrot,” Tinkie says. “Have you taught Poe to curse yet?”
“I am not going to teach that raven to curse. You act like I’m a bad influence.”
Tinkie just laughs. “You are a bad influence, and you know you curse like a sailor, which is excellent since you want to be a river pirate.”
I do curse. Sometimes. Very creatively. I change the subject. “Look at all the people in town.” Greenville had been slowly dying. River traffic was down, and cotton was no longer king. The movie is helping the town reinvent itself. “It’s good to see Greenville bustling.”
“Look at the crowd sitting outside the bookstore,” Tinkie points out. “Is that Marlon Brandon, the star?”
“Looks like it.” The actor was even more handsome in the flesh than on the screen. “He is … good-looking.” His dark good looks came packaged in a manicured body. He exuded sex appeal.
“Yes, he is.” Tinkie grabs my hand. “Let’s go over and meet him.”
I hold back. “People are all over him.” That is true. Women, men, and children are three deep around the little table where he sits drinking a coffee and trying to read a newspaper. The actor handles it all with grace. He poses for selfies and lets giggling young girls kiss his cheek for their social media posts.
“It’s a swarm.” Tinkie is about to drag me by the hand. “Two more lookie-loos won’t suffocate him. You realize he legally changed his name to Marlon when he went out to Hollywood? He liked being one letter removed from the famous Brando.”
I roll my eyes at Tinkie. “You should change your name to Nosy Parker. Let’s give him some space. I’d like to see some of the filming before we’re banned from the set and told never to come back.”
“I hear they’re going to shoot some of the rescue scenes when that big storm is scheduled to come through.”
I’d read the same information in Cece’s and Millie’s popular column The Truth Is Out There.
“When that front gets here, the possibility of tornadoes is seventy percent.” Like any good farm girl, I am keenly attuned to the weather. The April skies so far have been remarkably calm. April is one of those months of incredible sun when the crops seem to jump out of the brown soil and grow an inch a day. Or it can be Dorothy: tornadoes and flying monkeys.
In April of 1927, the weather had turned treacherous and deadly. The 1927 flood killed more than a thousand people and was still one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States. In the lead-up to the levee breach, the rain had been relentless for weeks. The Delta is a triangle of rich alluvial soil bordered on the west by the Mississippi River and the Loess Hills on the east. It stretches from south of Memphis down to Vicksburg, the perfect floodplain, totally flat, productive alluvial soil. On the day the levee north of the city broke, the Mississippi River poured into the flat Delta and rushed down to Greenville, mostly submerging the town and drowning hundreds.
The creation of Lake Ferguson, an oxbow lake, somewhat protects the city now, but in 1927, nearly 50,000 homes in the Delta region were flooded and more than 20,000 buildings were destroyed. Another 62,000 were damaged. Nearly 300,000 chickens, hogs, cattle, and work animals drowned. Human deaths from the flooding numbered more than a thousand in the Delta alone.
Tinkie swept a hand in front of her, echoing, as her words often did, my own thoughts. “I don’t think I’m tough enough to have survived that flood,” she said. “People clung to treetops for days, waiting for rescue. When the levee broke and the river flooded inland, there wasn’t a chance to escape. Zinnia was lucky, upstate from the levee breach. Do you think the movie will be able to depict that?”
“CGI is an awesome thing,” I told her. “They can recreate some of the worst weather with computers. I’ll be curious to see how they do it. I know the movie company brought in a riverboat.”
“How will they show the town being flooded? You know the floodwaters were waist high in the downtown section for weeks?”
I wasn’t a film expert, but Tinkie obviously believed my unsuccessful career on Broadway had given me insight into how movies are made. I was perfectly happy to pander to that view. “Did you see they’re building a rooftop set at the north end of Broadway? Maybe they’ll actually flood it. That would be exciting.”
“What’s this movie really about?” Tinkie asked. “I know it’s supposed to be an action film about the great Brandon family stepping up to help save hundreds of people stranded on the levee. But there’s also some gossip that it’s more than that. What have you heard?”
Millie and Cece were my primary sources of celebrity gossip. Tinkie had the same resources. “I’ve heard vague mentions that Marlon Brandon is going to whitewash his family. Folks have opinions but no evidence. Gossip is delicious but it’s an empty feast.”
“Is that another of Aunt Loulane’s sayings?”
“No. It’s mine. I made it up.”
“No wonder.” She rolled her eyes and grinned. “The Brandon family made out okay after the flood,” Tinkie said. She knew local history—especially financial history—as well as social etiquette.
“Are you implying they were river pirates?” I couldn’t help but tease her. The Brandon family had been a force in the Delta for well over a century. They owned a large and beautiful estate inland and farmed close to six thousand acres. In 1927, they had also owned a downtown hardware store in Greenville, until the flood destroyed it. But the real Brandon fortune seemed to come from politics. Marlon was a big-time Hollywood actor but his grandfather, Brandon Brandon—a man so proud of his name he used it twice—had served six terms as a U.S. senator. In Mississippi, one of the poorest states in the union, politics was the golden ticket to wealth. No one left the Senate poorer than when they went in, and Senator Brandon had not only feathered his own nest, he’d brought home the federal bacon for the entire state. He was beloved by his constituents, and even I could see his charm.
“The Brandons aren’t river pirates, but let’s just say they may have cracked a few federal piggy banks.” She sighed. “Senator Brandon was very good for the state.”
“Not arguing. But did the Brandon family truly play a role in saving people from the floods?”
“I think so. They owned a riverboat and I’ve heard that the local boat owners confronted the dangerous storm to rescue people who were stranded by the rising floodwater.”
“No wonder Marlon wants to make the film.”
“Exactly,” Tinkie said. “Look!” She pointed. “Marlon is heading up on the levee. Let’s scoot over there and get a photo before he goes back to work. And we should take some photos for Cece. The newspaper will love them.”
She was right about that. “Let’s hit it.” I was following Tinkie when I caught a flash of something green and shimmery slithering through the river. I had a really bad feeling. “Go ahead and catch him,” I told Tinkie. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Nature calls,” I told her. She’d sympathize with that because when she’d been pregnant with Maylin, she’d had to go every ten minutes. “Catch him before he gets away and get a selfie. I can’t hold it any longer.”
She gave me the side-eye as she trotted after the star. I scurried toward the river. I had bad suspicions. The flash of green came again, and I saw a beautifully glistening body slicing through the water like a fish. A fish with mocha skin, black hair, dark eyes, and green scales over the lower half of her body. Her boobs were covered with decorated coconut shells. She looked like an exotic tropical phantom.
I looked around but no one else saw her.
“Jitty!” I called out to her. “What are you doing here acting like a mermaid?”
She flipped onto her back and fluttered her mermaid tail just enough to keep her head above water. “I’m following the lure of the sea,” she said. “All this hubbub goin’ on about the 1927 flood. Handsome actors all over the place. Film crews skinny-dippin’ in the river at night. I wanted to get in on some of all this.”
The disguise of a mermaid would be the perfect solution. If she wasn’t a ghost. “No one can see you but me.”
“That’s what you think.”
She had me there. The rules of the Great Beyond were complicated. And without consistency. If she appeared as a mythical creature, would she then be visible to others? Jitty would never tell me the truth, and I had to follow up on one point. “People are skinny-dipping in the river?”
“Oh, Sarah Booth, if you weren’t snoring into that sheriff’s armpit, you would be down here on the river at night with the rest of them. Marlon and his crew know how to have fun.” She slapped the water with her tail for emphasis. “My heavens, those people take good care of their bodies. They don’t eat all that sweet potato fluff, swill wine, gobble carbohydrates, and bloat up. You could learn some things.”
“Watch it, Jitty. You’re always saying you need to eat to keep up your strength. Maybe humans need their calories, too.”
She was being especially prickly today. “Who is skinny-dipping? Cece would love to have that scoop.”
“And you’d like to have a photo of that, no doubt. Forget it. Tonight, I’m going to scare them out of the water. This river is no place to frolic. Folks who don’t respect the river tend to drown. That current can grab a person and pull them down to the bottom. They might not float up again for three days, or the body might wash out to the Gulf of Mexico and get eaten by sharks.”
“Lovely.” Jitty could sometimes be even more gruesome than I could. “Why don’t you just go home?” I asked. “Leave the film crew to its own devices. And while you’re at it, leave me and the armpit alone, too.”
“Wouldn’t you like to see that Marlon Brandon step out of his skivvies and dive in the river?”
I held up a hand. “Stop it. I can’t have the picture in my brain. Coleman’s feelings would be hurt.” Coleman Peters was sheriff of Sunflower County and the man who’d stolen my heart.
“Coleman don’t have any jurisdiction in Washington County. He’s not the sheriff here.” Jitty put her hands on her hips and dared me to disagree.
“True. And I’m going home to Sunflower County as soon as Tinkie gets her photos with the movie people. Baby Maylin will be waiting for her.” I had a sudden clue as to what Tinkie was really up to. She was probably badgering the movie people to give Maylin a walk-on part. Oh, that would be so like her. “I have to go save the movie people from Tinkie.”
“You go right on, Sarah Booth. But remember there are things in this river that folks don’t see until it’s too late. You stay out of the water. I’m not kiddin’ you, either.”
“Even if I wanted a swim, I wouldn’t get in the river now. It’s April. The water is still cold. I like to swim, but only on a hot, hot day and I happen to agree that the Mississippi River is no place for swimming.”
“Your mama didn’t raise no fool,” Jitty said. She dove into the river, rose like a dolphin into the sun with a spray of foam, and disappeared into the dark depths. The last thing I saw were the fins of her tail.
2
I stopped atop the levee when I arrived near the set. Workers swarmed about, moving camera equipment, lights, and all the technical instruments of modern-day moviemaking. The person I assumed to be the cinematographer was with a camera crew, pointing out an angle to catch the sunlight dancing on the water.
The location the film crew selected was on the eastern side of Lake Ferguson, which was technically an oxbow lake with the southernmost end opening into the river. The lake protected the town and farmland behind the levee. Lake Ferguson was a beautiful location with sandbars and other recreational facilities, including a dock. An incredible riverboat from the early 1900s, in pristine condition and with fresh paint gleaming, was tied up at the dock. Beside it the rough outline of a raft was taking shape. Two men hammered on the raft. The riverboat I understood. The raft, not so much. Until I realized that in filming the 1927 flood, a raft might be a vessel that rescued folks stranded in the floodwater.
Just as I’d anticipated, Tinkie was sitting in a director’s chair beside Marlon Brandon, and she had her phone out, apparently showing him photos. I’m sure they were of Maylin. Tinkie was going to be an awful backstage mother if someone didn’t stop her.
I’d learned that some of the cast and crew were scattered around various bed-and-breakfasts or hotels, but travel trailers and tents had also been set up for dressing rooms and offices. In a way, the set reminded me of the hubbub of the local fair when it came to town. Lots of equipment and lots of people who craved an audience.
Another woman sat to Marlon’s left. When no one was looking at her, she glared at Tinkie. Was this a paramour of Marlon’s who felt Tinkie was competition? Or a crewmember impatient to get back to work? I decided to ask when the opportunity presented itself.
“Isn’t Maylin adorable?” I said to the group as I walked up. “She’s the smartest baby I’ve ever seen.”
“I always figured that Sarah Booth didn’t have a maternal bone in her body,” Tinkie said, giving me an impish grin. “But then Maylin came along, and Sarah Booth is a servant to her smallest whim.”
I couldn’t deny it. I’d do anything for that baby. “Yep, she’s special,” I said. “Are you going to cast her in the film?”
Copyright © 2024 by Carolyn Haines
