The River Queen (18 page)

Eight years ago, when Chris was thirty-three, his liver failed him. This was in part because of the Liquid-Plumr and years of surgery and medication and finally substance abuse. He was lying in a coma and wasn't expected to live unless an organ donor was found. Jerry and Kathy were trying to come to terms with the situation when they learned that the day before a fourteen-year-old girl from St. Louis named Meghan was on a holiday skiing outing with her school and she crashed into a tree. She was taken to a nearby hospital in Wisconsin, where she was declared brain-dead.

Meghan's parents agreed to take her off life support and have all her organs donated. Chris received the liver. A woman in the next room received the heart and lungs. Another man received her corneas. And so on. A year later Meghan's parents met with all the people willing to meet with them, who had received the organs of their only daughter. At this meeting Chris met Kristin, the woman who had received the heart and lungs. They fell in love, married, and Meghan's parents attended their wedding.

I lie there, listening to the ducks squawking as they settle for the night. How could I worry about my father's clothes? I tell myself. These people donated their daughter in all her parts. I think of Kate, her chocolate brown eyes, her beautiful hair. My daughter is not someone I think of in pieces.

Kate was born during a blizzard in New York. She was a month early, a phenomenon that apparently occurs during snowstorms and full moons. The night before I had taken a baby safety class. What do you do if your baby is on fire? What do you do if your baby is plugged into an electrical outlet? I had gone to the class alone and walked home along Central Park.

Snow was already beginning to fall and I lay down on my back to make a snow angel. I felt tired and my back ached. That night I couldn't sleep. For the past several nights I hadn't been able to sleep. I ran into an elderly neighbor in the lobby of my building and she'd asked how I was doing. “Oh, I'm fine,” I told her, “I just can't sleep.”

“The baby's coming,” she said.

I shook my head. “Not for another month.”

She shook her head back to me. “Now,” she said.

When I got home, I made myself some soup. I sat up, watching the news, trying to get tired, but sleep wouldn't come. I got into the tub and took a long hot bath and when I got out of the tub, my water broke.

My friend who lived upstairs took me to the hospital. Standing on snowdrifts, we hailed a taxi. It was four in the morning. I was nine months pregnant, carrying a small suitcase. When we got into the cab, the driver said, “I'm not going to the airport.”

“I'm not either,” I gasped.

When we got to the hospital, I handed him a twenty. “I don't have any change.”

“Keep it,” I said.

As I entered the hospital's double doors, a man passing a kidney stone tried to beat me to the reception desk. He was holding his side howling in pain as he pushed me out of the way. “We take the pregnant woman first,” the intake officer said and the man slumped to a bench. I labored for almost twenty hours. When the doctor told me he was doing a C-section, I told him I didn't care if he did a lobotomy. I wept uncontrollably the first time I heard Kate cry.

Six weeks later we flew down to Florida to spend a week with my parents. Before we arrived, I called my father to ask if he was comfortable with our visit. “Why not?” he replied. “We've got plenty of room.” Of course he knew what I meant. My father met Kate for the first time. As I sat in a lounge chair by their pool, trying to sleep, I watched him, walking with her in his arms around and around the pool.

Lying in my berth on the Mississippi River, I'm tired. I am genuinely tired and I don't feel the fast beating in my chest that has been my companion these past months. I flick off the light and pull the covers up to my chin. Only the sound of a passing freight train punctuates the night.

*   *   *

I wake in the morning as rested as I've been in months. I dress quickly and tell Tom and Jerry that I'm going to Casey's Convenience Store to see if they have real, brewed coffee and any olive oil, which I consider to be a staple.

“Olive oil?” Tom hoots. “And I'm Popeye.” He flexes a muscle for me. “Hey, Jer, you must be Bluto.”

“Oh, olive oil. Right.” Jerry nods in agreement. “How about motor oil? Can you cook with motor oil? That's more like it.”

“Yeah,” Tom comes back. “Motor oil. Hey, you don't even need to go to the store. I've got some Valvoline 50 around here.”

“Hey, pick up a little chardonnay while you're at it!” Jerry shouts. “French would be nice.”

“Okay, boys. I'll catch you later.”

Tom raises his big fists into the air. “The Comedy Hour begins,” he shouts as I head into town. On my way I stroll by houses with Halloween decorations up in full force—ghosts, witches, jack-o'-lanterns. It's only September 18. I can't imagine what they do around here for Christmas.
GO VIKINGS
banners are glued to windows. A lawn is planted with wild prairie grass and milkweed.

On a front stoop a red and white tub sits with a sign that reads
TUB REFINISHING
. A glassed-in porch displays dozens of shoes in all sizes and shapes. Birkenstocks, sneakers, pink platform shoes, flip-flops, high heels, kids' shoes, nurses' shoes, old people's shoes, hiking boots, galoshes.

This is riverfront, Main Street, U.S.A. Picket fences, flagpoles, lawn gnomes, screened-in porches, swings. The kind of houses Tom will later comment remind him of those in the old cowboy movies. Where you shoot a guy and he falls off the roof into a bale of hay. I go into Casey's and Tom's right. I am much more likely to find motor oil than olive oil.

Then I head back to Clark's Landing, the only restaurant in town, where I've agreed to meet the boys for breakfast. I get there first and take a booth near the front. It's Sunday morning and farm families are having breakfast after church. One family has five towheaded children, stabbing at their buttermilk pancakes swimming in syrup. There are men in company caps and Stetsons and a few wearing leather jackets that say on them
STURGIS, SOUTH DAKOTA
, where the annual Harley festival is held.

I've missed the Friday-night special. Beer-battered or biscuit-battered catfish, served with a nonalcoholic wine cooler. Deep-fried broccoli on the side. My stomach is churning as the boys come in. Tom takes one side of the booth and Jerry sits next to me. “We're both left-handed,” he says. “That's a good thing.”

Tom orders diet Dew, which comes in a huge white plastic glass, and he manages to down three of these glasses of greenish yellow liquid before his breakfast of two double cheeseburgers and fries is done. I'm having a pair of eggs over easy. Jerry orders the Western omelette, which is smothered in American cheese, cooked with peppers and onions. “I feel like eating light today,” he says.

After breakfast we stumble back to the boat. It is a beautiful day and Jerry doesn't seem to be in a rush. Tom starts chasing Samantha Jean up and down the beach and Jerry's tossing water onto the deck. I want to take my first river swim. The water looks clean enough and calm. I tell Jerry and he gives the river an eye. “Good day for it,” he says. “Might join you myself.” He pauses. “Wear your river shoes.”

“I was planning to.” I have already been warned of the dangers of clam shells that can slice off your heel.

“And maybe you should wear a life jacket,” Jerry adds as a second thought. A life jacket? Oh, he sounds like my dad. River shoes, life jacket. Tie a line around my waist? I am a very strong swimmer and the river is completely still. And I'm not planning to swim across it. Just paddle out a little ways. I cannot imagine why I'd need a life jacket.

I put on my bathing suit and river shoes and start to slip into the water on the upstream side of the boat when Jerry eyes me. “Don't get in on that side. You always want to swim on the shore side of the boat in the direction of the current. Always get in the water downstream from the boat.”

I give him a questioning stare.

“People go out swimming in the river and the current carries them under their boats. They get stuck there and drown. Oh gosh, there were these two kids on a raft once…”

I put my hands over my ears and pretend to sing a song. “It's okay,” I say. “Don't tell me.” Good old Jerry. Always a cheerful cautionary tale to go with any misstep you're about to make on the river. So I drag myself out of the water and go to the downstream side of our boat and put my feet into the silt. The bottom sucks at my river shoes.

The river is calm. Its surface is glossy and there is hardly a ripple as I lift my feet out of the silt, which seems to want to suck me back down. I swim out a few dozen yards and feel the first tug of water. Turning, I see that Jerry has gotten into the river as well and is tossing a life ring to Samantha Jean, who proceeds to rip it to pieces. Jerry is trying to get her to stop and I'm watching them play when I realize they are getting smaller and smaller.

It occurs to me that I'm being carried downstream. It is in fact a rather pleasant sensation. A little like being on a water-slide. But as I watch the
River Queen
slip away, and Tom and Jerry diminish in size, and Samantha Jean becomes a speck on the horizon, I grow concerned. I am being taken for a ride.

I try to swim back. At first I do a leisurely breaststroke, but I'm not getting anywhere. I try again, but I still seem to be moving away from the shore. This feels a bit like swimming in one of those continuous pools where you have to use all your strength just to stay in place. And I'm going backward.

I try harder, then switch to a crawl. I use all my might, but I make little progress. If anything it seems that I am being carried backward as if in a riptide. In another moment I'll be halfway to Memphis. I suddenly see why Huck and Jim missed their turnoff up the Ohio. Anyone would. They were riding this conveyor belt too. The river is a team of horses, dragging me with it.

I also see the wisdom of wearing a life jacket and I definitely understand the problem of getting sucked under the boat. But this is all hindsight. I'm fighting like a demon to get back to shore. Tom and Jerry are playing with Samantha Jean and the life ring and I give them a wave. “Hey, guys!” I call. They wave back. I swim, struggling, toward them. “Hello, Jerry? Tom?” I call to my two half-deaf river pilots, hoping they'll get the hint and throw me a line as they frolic at the shore. But they just wave.

Now I put my face in the water and use all the power in my arms. I paddle as if I'm being chased by a giant catfish, the kind rumored to lurk in the muddy depths of this stream. Brave souls “noodle” for them with their bare arms. I swim for my life and finally I reach a place around the bend where, for the first time, I can actually see a wing dam. There it is, a ripple in the water. A thin line of rocks barely revealed. A wing dam. It has eluded me, but I will recognize one from now on. And I know that on the other side the current will be weaker.

I work my way around it, treading water, and soon my river shoes graze the silty bottom. Breathless, I drag myself onto the sand where they notice me. “Hey, Mary,” Tom says. “How was your swim?”

“Great.” I'm gasping for breath. “That river is strong,” I tell them and they concur.

“You didn't need that vest, though, huh?” Jerry asks.

I nod. “Actually, I could've used it,” I say.

Jerry nods thoughtfully. “Well, next time you should.” Just offshore Samantha Jean frolics on top of the life ring as Tom splashes water into her yelping face.

AROUND THE BEND

24

E
VERYWHERE
I look there are stories. Around every bend. Everything you do, every line you throw. There's a tale to tell. Jerry, it seems, has a story for everything, usually one involving mutilation or death. Every waitress, every cabbie, every person at a marina, every boatman you meet will have his or her own. One that will always top yours.

If you saw a storm, they saw a tornado. If you saw a tornado, they were in a tidal wave. If you saw a big catfish, they've always seen a bigger one, no matter how big yours was to start with. If you were in an accident or had a great pet, they were in a worse accident or had a dog who shopped for dinner.

As we go through Lock and Dam 16, Jerry, who is at the helm, says, “Boy I remember the last time we were here. It smelled like brownies. I asked about it, but the lockmaster denied it.” He's steering us away from the wall as I take the line in the front and Tom takes his in the back. “I guess he didn't want to give me any.”

Holding the line I take a sip of my coffee from my Citgo mug. The boat shifts and scalding liquid sears my tongue. “Ouch!” I cry out. “I burned my tongue.” It feels as if somebody sanded it.

Jerry starts to tell me about when he burned his whole mouth. “With this very mug.” He holds up his Citgo mug. “Now let her go a little, Mary,” Jerry says. “You're holding too tight. Remember what happened to that woman from Trempealeau.” And Jerry makes a motion like a knife slitting his throat.

We are leaving the lock and dam, and river scum coats my hands. A sandbar to our starboard side is blanketed in birds. Pelicans, heron, egrets, cormorants, gulls. We're running the engine at fifteen hundred rpm. Jerry says this is a good speed to run it and not burn too much fuel. I stand next to him in the cabin, my face to the wind.

The rhythm of the boat has entered me. The gentle forward movement as we drift at a clip of eight and a half miles per hour. The sound of the engines as they punctuate our journey. As if life is just about forward motion. To go back is a struggle upstream. I'm coming to understand the meaning of “going with the flow.”

I check the mile marker, then glance at our maps. We're coming up on Hog Island at Mile 458. There seem to be many markers on this trip. There are the river markers and the day-markers, there are buoys and depth markers. There's the log Jerry keeps. There are the markers on walls to indicate high water and flood crests and on bridges and dams for clearance. Then there are my own personal markers. Eight days on the river and I've stopped taking my pills.