The River Queen (17 page)

I remember the circus. We went every year, but my father always had to leave before it was over. He didn't want to get stuck in traffic, in the rush. He couldn't stand being caught in the crowd. We'd be gathering up our things just as the huge cage was being assembled in the center ring. The cages that I knew contained the great cats were wheeled in, but I never saw the lion act because it was always at the end.

On Saturdays he would drive me for horseback riding and wait in the car. He'd take us to the movies, but never come inside. I sat through
Peter Pan
and
Moby Dick,
knowing my father was dozing in the parking lot. Even as I grew older and I was kissing boys in theaters, it was my father I envisioned, waiting in the car.

Once our new puppy chewed through the upholstery of a quilted chair. My mother noticed it late in the day and my father's train was due home in an hour. My mother, with her degree in fashion design, got on her hands and knees. She wore a shirtwaist dress and an apron and her legs sprawled across the floor. I watched her move needle and thread as she requilted that chair.

Then she raced to the station to meet his train.

*   *   *

A cabdriver takes me to the Lonestar Steakhouse out on Highway 61. He asks what I'm doing in Davenport and I tell him I'm writing a book about the Mississippi River. “Wow,” he says, “that's cool. You know when I was a boy my father told me once that he walked across the Mississippi. And I said ‘Dad, you aren't Jesus.' And he told me he walked across it at its source where it's only a few feet wide.”

At the Lonestar I'm on high mullet hairdo alert. It seems they are everywhere. “Well, how're you doing tonight?” my waitress, Tammy, says. “You all by your lonesome?” I've got the happiest waitress in the world and she tries to sell me something called the Texas Rose, which is a whole onion, fanned open and deep-fried. I pass on the Texas Rose and I order a glass of cabernet and a small New York strip steak. They do have sixteen-ounce steaks on the menu, which she tries to convince me will give me more for my buck, but I say no.

After that Tammy loses interest in me. I sit, sipping my cabernet, staring at the humongous footballs and beer cans that cover every inch of the ceiling. On the wall a stuffed Texas longhorn peers down at me. Tammy delivers a bucket of beer to a table with two mullets. A couple gets up and starts doing the Texas two-step in the middle of the floor.

I go back to my hotel. Thirsty, I get up in the middle of the night and find the water bottle I keep by the side of my bed. I take a big swig, but the taste is orange Fanta, which I assume was left by a previous guest.

The next morning in the hotel breakfast room I'm lining up my pills as an old waitress with a blue rinse and a tag that reads
NANCY
pours my coffee. I ask her how things are going and she says, “Could be better.”

When I ask her to fill me up again, I say, “How so?”

“It's just not a good time around here,” Nancy says. I can see she's old and tired and doesn't want to be working on her feet.

“Things slow on the river?” I say.

Nancy nods, her face a rut of frowns. “We're fifty inches of rain short. My son's a farmer. He's got four farms. Owns two and farms the other two. He lost his whole corn crop. Lost everything. Between 9/11 and Katrina and now this drought…” She shakes her head. “If you ask me, I think this country's just about through.”

Nancy brings me my eggs, which I eat slowly. She doesn't talk to me again.

22

I'
M BACK
at the boat before nine and the boys look happy to see me. We're heading south again. But before we do, Jerry says I can pilot up- and downriver, get the feel of going upstream, and try out some wide turns. So far I've only piloted on a straight shot so this will be new for me.

It's a warm day and I slip into a pair of pink capris and a pink spandex top, which I haven't worn yet. They are also the only clean clothes I have left. When I emerge from my nook, Tom gives a whistle. “Oh-oh,” he says. “Lady in Pink.”

“Violation,” Jerry says.

It's a big river here with just some pleasure craft as I maneuver under an old railroad swing bridge. I ease the wheel gently and execute my first turn around Stubbs' Eddy, named for James R. Stubbs, who returned from the army in 1834 and lived for twelve years in a cave on Arsenal Island with an assortment of animals, including a pet pig. Since the outside curve of a river bend is known as an eddy, steamboat men, travelers, and locals came to call this bend in the river Stubbs' Eddy.

As I'm making my turn, a cruiser, zipping along at about thirty miles per hour, slows to about two and gives me wide berth. “Hey, watch out for the Lady in Pink,” Tom howls.

“He just didn't know what you were doing,” Jerry says. “He wanted to avoid any unplanned directional maneuver.”

“Well, I know what I'm doing,” I reply defiantly. Just then a sailboat cuts me off and I have to veer. I assume I've got the right of way, but Jerry shakes his head. “The boat with the least control always has the right of way,” he tells me.

“Well, in this case…,” Tom says, chuckling as the sailboat tacks away. “Hey, he's not taking any chances.”

“Okay, guys, got it.” I continue making my turn.

“You don't mind if I joke with you a bit?” Tom says, rather sheepishly.

“What the hell. It's open season,” I reply. I'm heading for my second pass under the swing bridge when I notice that there are hundreds of people on the levee. In the water nearby boats are anchored. It is the anchored boats that give it away. “Hey, Jerry,” I say. “I think there's a concert.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Well, see all those people and the boats? The boats are listening to music from the water. That's why they're tied up there.” I can see that they are dubious, but I know from summers spent in Prague, where I used to get into a pedalboat with a picnic to hear concerts for free.

Jerry takes the wheel as he always does when we maneuver in tight situations. As we get closer, they see I'm right. Sure enough, it's a concert, but it's electric blues. I have a feeling they won't want to stop.

“It's blues,” Tom says.

“Let's rock,” Jerry says. He brings the
River Queen
into position near the levee. If it's an old levee, he says we've got only six feet of draft, but he checks our depth and when he likes the way we're lined up, says, “Okay, Tom, let's drop anchor.”

Tom tosses an anchor in. “You want me to leave her slack?”

“Don't drop the line!” Jerry shouts. “Let me move her back before she sets.”

Tom's staring at the water. “That's pretty nice for one anchor. You want another for a lovie-dovie?”

“Hey,” I ask Jerry, “have you ever thrown an anchor without a rope on it?”

Jerry looks at me as if I'm crazy. “No,” he says. We've got some B. B. King playing on the levee and the boys settle back with beers and diet Dew. I take a diet Coke for myself and start dancing on the flybridge. “Well,” Jerry says, “we scorched a mile and a half today.”

“Come On, Baby, Let the Good Times Roll” is playing and the crowd is rocking. A couple, dressed in all-white linen, is dancing on the levee. He's wearing a white cap. I've come up on the flybridge with a bag of green beans in my hand to clean them in the shade. “What's that?” Tom asks when he sees the bag.

“Green beans,” I say, holding it up.

He looks off as the music comes on loud and strong and pretty soon I'm dancing away and the couple sees me. They give a wave. The young man takes off his cap and salutes me. A cruiser comes up fast and a brown-haired woman in a bikini stands up and shakes her tits in time to the “boom boom” of the song at the crowd, which begins hooting and applauding. Tom's applauding and Jerry's just shaking his head. The hooter gives one last shake for good measure, then speeds away.

There's a break in the music and I settle under the bimini and start breaking the tips off the beans. Tom stares at me for a few moments. “What're you doing?” he asks.

“Um, I'm cleaning these beans for supper.”

“Well, you should do that in the galley, not on the fly.”

“Ah, well, I wanted to get some air and shade.” I point to the bimini, but I see that Tom is clearly annoyed.

“That's not something you do on the flybridge.” And he gets up and heads below.

I'm stunned that I've upset him with my green beans. After all, he eats on the flybridge. Why can't I prepare my beans? But it seems I've broken some code of the sea. Perhaps it's bad luck having a woman on board. Or having green beans on board. Obviously I have offended some sailors' sense of propriety or evoked some age-old superstition. I'm recalling Jonah. Perhaps now is when they cast me into the drink.

The music starts again and I put the green beans away. The couple in linen are dancing and waving me on and I can't resist. I'm rocking alone, shaking to the blues, when suddenly I hear a splash. It sounds as if a rhino has leaped into the river. Gazing down I see Tom swimming and splashing while Samantha Jean starts to have a heart attack with me on the flybridge.

His mood of moments before is altered as he frolics and dives and knocks himself out. He disappears under the water, then comes shooting out again. He lies, splayed on his back, floating. Then after a while he wants to get back on the boat, but he's having some trouble reboarding. I must admit to some small sense of satisfaction as Tom flails around by the swim platform but can't quite heave his hefty self on board. As he swims to the bow and tries to board from there, I'm gloating. This must have something to do with karma.

He shouts up to Jerry. “Sir,” he says, “could you lower the bow step, please?”

But Jerry refuses. “Your failure to prepare is not my priority,” he says sternly, walking away. Jerry looks up at me. “That is an unauthorized swim.” I can't tell if he's kidding or not.

I give him a shrug, but I see that Tom is panting, struggling now to stay afloat. “Come on, Jer.”

Jerry shakes his head. But Tom is pleading and, finally, with a melodramatic wave of the hands, Jerry lowers the bow step for Tom. “Thank you, Captain,” Tom says as Jerry tosses a towel into his gut.

I switch to an afternoon beer, a rarity for me, as we groove to “Last night I got caught in a hurricane/when I asked her what her name was, she just said desire/Last night I got hit by a speeding truck…” I am lost in the lyrics, swaying on board, but the day is getting later and we need to find a place to beach for the night.

It's time to pull up anchor. “Let's move her forward a bit before bringing her up,” Jerry says to a dripping-wet Tom, his belly shaking. “I don't want her to sink in deeper.”

Tom hauls the anchor out, and, as he does, a giant razor clam clings to it. “Wow,” he says. “Look at that.” He holds it up and it is a very big clam, maybe eight inches long. “I've never clammed with an anchor before.” He starts prying it off the line and gives me a look. “Now don't clam up on me.”

To the tune of “Evil Woman” I groan as I struggle to help him with the line. Our little spat has ended. Tom jiggles the line until the clam drops back into the river. As we stow the anchors and start downriver, Jerry muses, “Maybe we should'a saved that clam and Mary could've put it in her journal.”

The river opens up and the urban landscape drifts behind us once again. We pass a silent grain elevator on the side of the road. I'm thinking it's Sunday, but Jerry says it's the drought. “She'd be working today if she had anything to do.” A barge going north soaks us with its wake. Some of its rafts have coal on them. One is filled with portable toilets.

I want to see where we're headed and start flipping through the river planner I bought in La Crosse. But this planner ends a mile south of Davenport and we're past that point. Now I'm making it up as I go along.

23

B
UFFALO
B
EACH
presents itself around a wide bend. The sun is setting and we've decided to tie up here for the night. But passengers on two cruisers are having a party at Clark's Landing, where we're heading. Just south is another, more deserted, beach on a woodsy spit of land and I've got my heart set on that one. “Can't we go there?” I ask Jerry.

“Be quiet,” Jerry snaps. “Let me get us in.” He is nervous and focused and, I've learned, can get more than a little ornery in those moments. He points the nose of the
River Queen
straight for the beach, checking the draft of the boat, and cuts the throttle. At last I hear that sound of the boat coming up on the shore and, when Jerry is sure we are secure here, he explains, “There are rocks and wing dams over there. See them?”

I look, but see nothing. Just more ripples in the water that all look the same. “Well, you need to be able to see those things.” I nod, wondering if I ever will. “We'll spend the night here.”

Tom's already out of the boat with Samantha Jean, who is “chasing waves.” “Go get the waves!” Tom yells. “Come on, Sammy, go chase some waves!” He's taking down the anchors, placing and burying them in the sand. Then he wanders off in search of driftwood for a fire. I've got steaks in lime, corn in salt and lime wrapped in foil, and I start cooking green beans the way my mother cooks them, in butter and soy. Jerry uncorks the merlot.

Jerry gets those steaks off the grill just in time and we eat on my table on the bow in silence, the corn, the steak, those green beans, sipping our merlot. We all agree it's one of the best meals we've ever had. A harvest moon's rising to the northeast—full and orange, the kind that will light fields all night as farmers bring in their corn and we stomp out the fire and head to bed.

I'm settling down to read when Jerry “knocks” on my curtain. “I've been wanting to show you this.” He's never invaded my space before and I am a little surprised. But as I pull back my green curtain, he hands me a copy of
People
magazine. He tells me that inside I'll read about his son, Chris, the boy who once swallowed the Liquid-Plumr, and his wife, Kristin. “Is this the rest of the story?” I ask, and Jerry nods. Then he says good night.