Life on The Mississippi (21 page)

In the absence of further statistics, I beg to close this chapter with one more reminiscence of “Stephen.”

Most of the captains and pilots held Stephen’s note for borrowed sums, ranging from two hundred and fifty dollars upward. Stephen never paid one of these notes, but he was very prompt and very zealous about renewing them every twelvemonth.

Of course there came a time, at last, when Stephen could no longer borrow of his ancient creditors; so he was obliged to lie in wait for new men who did not know him. Such a victim was good-hearted, simple-natured young Yates (I use a fictitious name, but the real name began, as this one does, with a Y). Young Yates graduated as a pilot, got a berth, and when the month was ended and he stepped up to the clerk’s office and received his two hundred and fifty dollars in crisp new bills, Stephen was there! His silvery tongue began to wag, and in a very little while, Yates’s two hundred and fifty dollars had changed hands. The fact was soon known at pilot headquarters, and the amusement and satisfaction of the old creditors were large and generous. But innocent Yates never suspected that Stephen’s promise to pay promptly at the end of the week was a worthless one. Yates called for his money at the stipulated time; Stephen sweetened him up and put him off a week. He called then, according to agreement, and came away sugarcoated again, but suffering under another postponement. So the thing went on. Yates haunted Stephen week after week, to no purpose, and at last gave it up. And then straightway Stephen began to haunt Yates! Wherever Yates appeared, there was the inevitable Stephen. And not only there, but beaming with affection and gushing with apologies for not being able to pay. By and by, whenever poor Yates saw him coming, he would turn and fly, and drag his company with him, if he had company; but it was of no use; his debtor would run him down and corner him. Panting and red-faced, Stephen would come, with outstretched hands and eager eyes, invade the conversation, shake both of Yates’s arms loose in their sockets, and begin:

“My, what a race I’ve had! I saw you didn’t see me, and so I clapped on all steam for fear I’d miss you entirely. And here you are! There, just stand so, and let me look at you! Just the same old noble countenance.” [To Yates’s friend:] “Just look at him!
Look
at him! Ain’t it just
good
to look at him!
Ain’t
it now? Ain’t he just a picture!
Some
call him a picture;
I
call him a panorama! That’s what he is—an entire panorama. And now I’m reminded! How I do wish I could have seen you an hour earlier! For twenty-four hours I’ve been saving up that two hundred and fifty dollars for you; been looking for you everywhere. I waited at the Planter’s from six yesterday evening till two o’clock this morning, without rest or food; my wife says ‘Where have you been all night?’ I said, ‘This debt lies heavy on my mind.’ She says, ‘In all my days I never saw a man take a debt to heart the way you do.’ I said, ‘It’s my nature; how can
I
change it?’ She says, ‘Well, do go to bed and get some rest.’ I said, ‘Not till that poor, noble young man has got his money.’ So I set up all night, and this morning out I shot, and the first man I struck told me you had shipped on the
Grand Turk
and gone to New Orleans. Well, sir, I had to lean up against a building and cry. So help me goodness, I couldn’t help it. The man that owned the place come out cleaning up with a rag, and said he didn’t like to have people cry against his building, and then it seemed to me that the whole world had turned against me, and it wasn’t any use to live anymore; and coming along an hour ago, suffering no man knows what agony, I met Jim Wilson and paid him the two hundred and fifty dollars on account; and to think that here you are, now, and I haven’t got a cent! But as sure as I am standing here on this ground on this particular brick,—there, I’ve scratched a mark on the brick to remember it by—I’ll borrow that money and pay it over to you at twelve o’clock sharp, tomorrow! Now, stand so; let me look at you just once more.”

And so on. Yates’s life became a burden to him. He could not escape his debtor and his debtor’s awful sufferings on account of not being able to pay. He dreaded to show himself in the street, lest he should find Stephen lying in wait for him at the corner.

Bogart’s billiard saloon was a great resort for pilots in those days. They met there about as much to exchange river news as to play. One morning Yates was there; Stephen was there, too, but kept out of sight. But by and by, when about all the pilots had arrived who were in town, Stephen suddenly appeared in the midst, and rushed for Yates as for a long-lost brother.

“
Oh
, I am so glad to see you! Oh my soul, the sight of you is such a comfort to my eyes! Gentlemen, I owe all of you money; among you I owe probably forty thousand dollars. I want to pay it; I intend to pay it—every last cent of it. You all know, without my telling you, what sorrow it has cost me to remain so long under such deep obligations to such patient and generous friends; but the sharpest pang I suffer—by far the sharpest—is from the debt I owe to this noble young man here; and I have come to this place this morning especially to make the announcement that I have at last found a method whereby I can pay off all my debts! And most especially I wanted
him
to be here when I announced it. Yes, my faithful friend—my benefactor, I’ve found the method! I’ve found the method to pay off
all
my debts, and you’ll get your money!” Hope dawned in Yates’s eye; then Stephen, beaming benignantly, and placing his hand upon Yates’s head, added, “I am going to pay them off in alphabetical order!”

Then he turned and disappeared. The full significance of Stephen’s “method” did not dawn upon the perplexed and musing crowd for some two minutes; and then Yates murmured with a sigh:

“Well, the Y’s stand a gaudy chance. He won’t get any further than the C’s in
this
world, and I reckon that after a good deal of eternity has wasted away in the next one, I’ll still be referred to up there as ‘That poor, ragged pilot that came here from St. Louis in the early days!’”

During the two or two and a half years of my apprenticeship, I served under many pilots, and had experience of many kinds of steamboatmen and many varieties of steamboats; for it was not always convenient for Mr. Bixby to have me with him, and in such cases he sent me with somebody else. I am to this day profiting somewhat by that experience; for in that brief, sharp schooling, I got personally and familiarly acquainted with about all the different types of human nature that are to be found in fiction, biography, or history. The fact is daily borne in upon me that the average shore employment requires as much as forty years to equip a man with this sort of an education. When I say I am still profiting by this thing, I do not mean that it has constituted me a judge of men—no, it has not done that; for judges of men are born, not made. My profit is various in kind and degree; but the feature of it which I value most is the zest which that early experience has given to my later reading. When I find a well-drawn character in fiction or biography, I generally take a warm personal interest in him, for the reason that I have known him before—met him on the river.

The figure that comes before me oftenest, out of the shadows of that vanished time, is that of Brown, of the steamer
Pennsylvania
—the man referred to in a former chapter, whose memory was so good and tiresome. He was a middle-aged, long, slim, bony, smooth-shaven, horse-faced, ignorant, stingy, malicious, snarling, fault-hunting, mote-magnifying tyrant. I early got the habit of coming on watch with dread at my heart. No matter how good a time I might have been having with the off watch below, and no matter how high my spirits might be when I started aloft, my soul became lead in my body the moment I approached the pilothouse.

I still remember the first time I ever entered the presence of that man. The boat had backed out from St. Louis and was “straightening down”; I ascended to the pilothouse in high feather, and very proud to be semiofficially a member of the executive family of so fast and famous a boat. Brown was at the wheel. I paused in the middle of the room, all fixed to make my bow, but Brown did not look around. I thought he took a furtive glance at me out of the corner of his eye, but as not even this notice was repeated, I judged I had been mistaken. By this time he was picking his way among some dangerous “breaks” abreast the woodyards; therefore it would not be proper to interrupt him; so I stepped softly to the high bench and took a seat.

There was silence for ten minutes; then my new boss turned and inspected me deliberately and painstakingly from head to heel for about—as it seemed to me—a quarter of an hour. After which he removed his countenance and I saw it no more for some seconds; then it came around once more, and this question greeted me:

“Are you Horace Bigsby’s cub?”

“Yes, sir.”

After this there was a pause and another inspection. Then:

“What’s your name?”

I told him. He repeated it after me. It was probably the only thing he ever forgot; for although I was with him many months he never addressed himself to me in any other way than “Here!” and then his command followed.

“Where was you born?”

“In Florida, Missouri.”

A pause. Then:

“Dern sight better staid there!”

By means of a dozen or so of pretty direct questions, he pumped my family history out of me.

The leads were going now, in the first crossing. This interrupted the inquest. When the leads had been laid in, he resumed:

“How long you been on the river?”

I told him. After a pause:

“Where’d you get them shoes?”

I gave him the information.

“Hold up your foot!”

I did so. He stepped back, examined the shoe minutely and contemptuously, scratching his head thoughtfully, tilting his high sugar-loaf hat well forward to facilitate the operation, then ejaculated, “Well, I’ll be dod-derned!” and returned to his wheel.

What occasion there was to be dod-derned about it is a thing which is still as much of a mystery to me now as it was then. It must have been all of fifteen minutes—fifteen minutes of dull, homesick silence—before that long horse-face swung round upon me again—and then, what a change! It was as red as fire, and every muscle in it was working. Now came this shriek:

“Here! You going to set there all day?”

I lit in the middle of the floor, shot there by the electric suddenness of the surprise. As soon as I could get my voice I said, apologetically: “I have had no orders, sir.”

“You’ve had no
orders!
My, what a fine bird we are! We must have
orders!
Our father was a
gentleman
—owned slaves—and
we’ve
been to
school
. Yes,
we
are a gentleman,
too
, and got to have
orders!
ORDERS, is it? ORDERS is what you want! Dod-dern my skin,
I’ll
learn you to swell yourself up and blow around
here
about your dod-derned
orders!
G’ way from the wheel!” (I had approached it without knowing it.)

I moved back a step or two, and stood as in a dream, all my senses stupefied by this frantic assault.

“What you standing there for? Take that ice pitcher down to the texas tender—come, move along, and don’t you be all day about it!”

The moment I got back to the pilothouse, Brown said:

“Here! What was you doing down there all this time?”

“I couldn’t find the texas tender; I had to go all the way to the pantry.”

“Derned likely story! Fill up the stove.”

I proceeded to do so. He watched me like a cat. Presently he shouted:

“Put down that shovel! Derndest numskull I ever saw—ain’t even got sense enough to load up a stove.”

All through the watch this sort of thing went on. Yes, and the subsequent watches were much like it, during a stretch of months. As I have said, I soon got the habit of coming on duty with dread. The moment I was in the presence, even in the darkest night, I could feel those yellow eyes upon me, and knew their owner was watching for a pretext to spit out some venom on me. Preliminarily he would say:

“Here! Take the wheel.”

Two minutes later:

“
Where
in the nation you going to? Pull her down! Pull her down!”

After another moment:

“Say! You going to hold her all day? Let her go—meet her! Meet her!”

Then he would jump from the bench, snatch the wheel from me, and meet her himself, pouring out wrath upon me all the time.

George Ritchie was the other pilot’s cub. He was having good times now; for his boss, George Ealer, was as kindhearted as Brown wasn’t. Ritchie had steered for Brown the season before; consequently he knew exactly how to entertain himself and plague me, all by the one operation. Whenever I took the wheel for a moment on Ealer’s watch, Ritchie would sit back on the bench and play Brown, with continual ejaculations of “Snatch her! Snatch her! Derndest mud-cat I ever saw!” “Here! Where you going
now?
Going to run over that snag?” “Pull her
down!
Don’t you hear me? Pull her
down!
” “There she goes!
Just
as I expected! I
told
you not to cramp that reef. G’way from the wheel!”

So I always had a rough time of it, no matter whose watch it was; and sometimes it seemed to me that Ritchie’s goodnatured badgering was pretty nearly as aggravating as Brown’s dead-earnest nagging.

I often wanted to kill Brown, but this would not answer. A cub had to take everything his boss gave, in the way of vigorous comment and criticism; and we all believed that there was a United States law making it a penitentiary offense to strike or threaten a pilot who was on duty. However, I could
imagine
myself killing Brown; there was no law against that; and that was the thing I used always to do the moment I was abed. Instead of going over my river in my mind as was my duty, I threw business aside for pleasure, and killed Brown. I killed Brown every night for months; not in old, stale, commonplace ways, but in new and picturesque ones—ways that were sometimes surprising for freshness of design and ghastliness of situation and environment.