EAGLE LAKE, Mississippi - On the lakefront sits a low metal building, Strick’s. It is the only business still open in Eagle Lake. And starting at 2 o’clock every afternoon and running into the evening, every person in town can be found here. All 15 of them.

While the population of Eagle Lake normally numbers in the hundreds, these few, these happy few, are all that remain. They are the holdouts after a townwide exodus, prompted by concerns over the fat and ferocious Mississippi River nearby .

Every night they sit in this bar, drinking beer and eating a communal dinner of hamburgers or crawfish or whatever was brought in by the last person to visit a grocery store.

They tell stories, watch television and talk about any number of things, but usually about the latest measurements of the river, the state of the levees on which they depend for survival and their disappointment in the less hardy souls who took off at the first hint of danger.

“A bunch of people are real sorry they left,” said Tim Stennett, 52, a building contractor who took over the bar when Strick himself - Mike Strickland, formally - handed off the keys.

Mr. Stennett’s wife, Sheryl, became the bartender, though the Stennetts leave the keys with anyone who wants to drink late. Drinks are paid for on the honor system.

The Eagle Lake community sits between cornfields and Eagle Lake itself. It is a popular spot for fish camps and weekend homes, but more and more people have decided to live here full time, making the 56-kilometer commute into Vicksburg for work.

With floodwaters closing roads and highways, that trip has now stretched to 225 kilometers. Eagle Lake itself is higher by about four meters, increased by the Corps of Engineers to equalize pressure on the Buck Chute levee along the Mississippi. This elevation swallowed up piers and boathouses.

But the predicted deluge that sent nearly everyone running for higher ground has not come to pass, not yet anyway.

A levee breach remains a possibility . If it were to happen, Eagle Lake would simply disappear.

The only vestige of authority remaining is a four-day rotation of two officers from the Warren County Sheriff’s Department. Driving around, they saw a man walking down the street with a shotgun once. They went to Strick’s and asked about it.

“That was me,” one of the patrons said.

Those at Strick’s acknowledge that some think they are a little crazy for staying. But for nearly all of them, their life is the lake.

Most of Mr. Stennett’s work is on lake houses. Cindy Roberson is the sole remaining Eagle Lake representative of Godfrey & Ivy Realty, and all of her properties are along the lake as well. She checks in on them every day.

“It’s not rocket science,” she said of the calculus behind staying. “This is home.”


By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON