The River Queen (4 page)

After a while I grew weary of him. As we flew over the Midwest, I turned away. I gazed out the window and what I saw below astonished me. Though I knew the rivers were flooding that summer, I did not anticipate that the two great rivers—the Mississippi and Missouri—had converged into a giant lake. Indeed, there was barely the shape of a river below. Only huge pools of water. Farmhouses had the numbers of their insurance policies painted on the roof. Others had just written the word “Help.”

But Kansas City seemed immune. At the airport I was met by my hosts, who took me to my hotel—a charming historic building along one of the tributaries of the Missouri River. The hotel was right in the heart of downtown with a lovely river walk and a gentrified shopping area, and here the river flowed smoothly by with none of the fury and devastation I had witnessed on my flight.

That night I went to Stroud's for fried chicken, then tried to walk it off with a stroll along the Missouri's branch just outside my hotel. It was a clear, warm night and the walk was illumined with old gas lamps, providing a quaint view of downtown Kansas City. By ten o'clock I was tired but also restless.

I couldn't get the river out of my mind. Finally I fell into a deep sleep, but was awakened in the middle of the night by a roar. At first I didn't know where I was. Then I remembered—in a hotel in Kansas City. The roaring came again and it sounded like rushing water.

I had no idea where it was coming from. I walked around the room in the dark, not wanting to turn on the light as the sound grew louder. I went to the window of my hotel and pulled back the curtain. I looked down. I thought because of the darkness and my fatigue, my eyes were playing tricks on me. It did not seem possible that what I was seeing was there.

A torrent filled the street. It was black-and-white and seemed to go in several directions at once. Where the river walk had been was now a coursing flood, dark and roiling. This flood ran down the road, spilling into the side streets. It blocked, as far as I knew, my only exit from the hotel. It was as if that river had suddenly changed course, leaped over a wall, and was now just a few floors below my window.

The noise was deafening, like an engine revving over and over. And I was afraid. This was not some slow river, some “old man” river. This was a churning creature, seemingly with a mind of its own. How far would this water rise? Could I get to the roof? Could I get away? Or would I be swept away in its current? I am a strong swimmer, but I knew I would drown.

I sat at the window, unsure of what to do. The sun appeared, a pale violet in the sky, and the river disappeared from the street and slipped back into its banks, like some monster in a child's bad dream. And I was left to wonder if that raging water had been there at all.

6

I
T SEEMS
if Jerry was right about anything, it's “slow.” The morning is inching toward noon and Tom's still trying to get the manifold installed. I'm starting to think that we are never going to leave. As I'm getting dressed behind the lime green curtain, Tom comes into the galley and grabs a handful of chocolate chip cookies and another diet Dew. I hear him crush an empty can in his bare hands.

While Jerry is on his knees with a caulking gun, trying to attach the toilet bowl to the base, Tom's putting the starboard engine back together. Tom's coming along was part of our “deal,” such as it was. Since I'd wanted to do this trip alone, it seemed to me that two people was more than enough. But as we negotiated our journey, Jerry told me he needed Tom. “He's a good mechanic,” Jerry said. “And besides, Honeybun wants him along.” “Honeybun” is Jerry's wife, Kathy.

“You mean Tom is our…”—I hesitated to say the word—“chaperone?”

“Something like that,” Jerry replied.

Now I gaze at Tom, yelling at his engines (“Come on, you lazy little girl!”) as Jerry tries to make the top of the toilet hold. “Getting there, Sir!” Tom shouts. “We'll heat her up soon.”

“Whenever you're ready, Tommyboy.”

“You'll be the first to know, Sir.”

Jerry gives the toilet a shove. When he's satisfied, he stands up and stares at it for a long time. Then he looks at me and says, “Well, hopefully it won't leak.”

I am reluctant to christen it (and besides, we still have no water with which to flush as our water pump isn't hooked up), so I make several more trips up to the boathouse, where the cronies sit, taking this all in. I pause, gazing down at the
River Queen.
Her polished trim glistens in the sun.

In the six weeks since we made our “agreement,” which consisted of a handshake and some vague financial arrangements, Jerry and I shared many phone calls in which he'd tell me how the paint job was coming, how they'd gotten the bimini shade up on the flybridge. He'd refurbished the engines and secured the davits for the aft transom, which was to hold the dinghy. In most of these conversations I had no idea what he was talking about.

Then a week ago Jerry phoned to say they'd launched her. “You mean she's in the water?” I asked, ebullient.

He paused as he tended to do. “Not ‘in the water,' Mary. We like to say ‘on the water.' It's better if a boat's on it than in it. Do you catch my drift?”

Yesterday when I arrived, the
River Queen
was floating on the water, exactly as I'd imagined her, all white and shiny. Her bimini shade was up and the captain's wheel on the flybridge was a brassy brown. She looked shipshape to me. But as I came on board, lugging my duffels and suitcases and backpack with computer and binoculars and yoga mat and Eddie Bauer drinking mug and waterproof matches and all-weather gear, the orange life jacket circa 1950 I borrowed from a neighbor at the last minute, sticks of half-skim mozzarella cheese and twelve individual servings of tuna fish I tossed in “just in case,” I saw that things weren't as they seemed.

The deck was a mess of muddy footprints. Inside the cabin was still filled with junk, much of it appearing to be the same I'd first seen. All the surfaces were covered with cables, power tools, boxes of screws and bolts. My “bed” was buried beneath tarps and drills and a blown-up air mattress. A layer of grime, which I correctly believed to be axle grease, was everywhere. The round hollow of a toilet seat lay on the floor. Outside Tom stood, holding engine parts in his blackened hands.

I tried to put on a good face, but I was despondent. I had no idea how this boat would come together in any way in the next twelve hours, let alone be the cozy little houseboat I'd envisioned myself traveling on. But somehow all the clanging and banging have led to something and just before noon, when I was ready to despair, Tom gives a shout. “We're ready to rock 'n' roll!”

“Holy buttocks,” Jerry quips. And then in a more serious captain's voice: “Are there any unauthorized personnel on board?” Jerry asks.

“Just Mary,” Tom says with his big guffaw.

“Ha ha,” I say as I start to untie the lines. I'm fumbling with the ropes when a man approaches.

“I'll take care of that,” he says. His name is Dave and he's just appeared on the dock. With a seaman's expertise and a few deft strokes, Dave unloops the line from the cleats and hands it to me as if I know what to do with it. “Well, Jerry,” he says as we proceed to start our engines, “good luck.”

And the laconic Jerry replies, “Thanks,” as he takes the line out of my hands and ties it to the bow. Now Dave starts to push us away from the dock. It appears as if we really are leaving.

“Jerry!” Tom shouts. “I need you to fire them up! Start with a half throttle, okay?”

“Roger,” Jerry says.

“Clear!” Tom yells.

“Contact.” There is a sputter, then nothing. We begin again, same routine. Another “clear!” “contact.” Finally there is a roar, like a great beast waking, a fart of exhaust that fills the cabin and my sleeping nook. I head to the back to close the doors.

“Don't worry about that!” Jerry shouts. “The fumes will go out once we're under way. Clear!” Jerry yells.

“Contact.” Now the engines scream to a start. Some of the cronies have come onto the dock with wry smiles. We still have no water, electricity, working toilet, fridge, screens except at the helm, whistle, siren, night-light, or shower, but we appear for now to have two engines. Basically we are a hull, traveling downstream. The cronies and a few extras give us a shove, then start waving as we putter, trailing a plume of smoke and a few backfires, onto the river.

I wave back. We are on the Black, which in a few miles will feed into the Mississippi, and I feel the tug. I am like some feckless explorer setting off to find the New World. I stand at the bow, waving frantically, a mad, wild figurehead. And it is clear to everyone, especially to me, that I have no idea what I am doing.

Tom takes over the wheel on the flybridge and Jerry says he's coming up too. I decide to join them. I go through the cabin to pick up my White Sox cap on my bed. Thrilled to be sailing, I spring out the aft door and smash my head on the steel frame. “Oh-oh,” Jerry says as I exit, rubbing my skull. “Low clearance.”

*   *   *

On the flybridge Tom's got Samantha Jean sitting in his lap. She growls when she sees me coming and Tom tucks her into the black bomber jacket, covered in dog hair, that takes up the only available plastic chair. “That's her jacket,” he tells me. “Don't ever touch that jacket.”

“Oh, I wouldn't think of it.” Samantha Jean gazes up at me with her rheumy eyes.

“I mean, she wouldn't bite you or anything, but she'd make a big noise.”

“No problem,” I say.

It is a warm day in late summer as we head south. Jerry's come topside as well and he takes the wheel as we approach a railroad bridge. He scrunches up his face, surveying it. Then shakes his head. “Hey, Tommy, you think I'm gonna make it?”

“I don't think so,” I say, but Jerry ignores me.

“You'll clear her,” Tom says, “but we should take down the bimini.” Quickly we peel back the bimini shade. “You got her.” He reaches up and touches the bridge with his fingertips.

Jerry whistles through his teeth. “Way to go, Tommy.”

Tom and Jerry have known each other for years. They have worked together. Tom, whose mother died when he was nine and father when he was seventeen, looks up to Jerry as a father. I am the third wheel. Or fourth if you include Samantha Jean.

We approach the Xcel Energy generating plant, where an old pal of Jerry's has been waiting since seven a.m. to take our picture. As he comes out of a small outdoor office with his camera, Tom pretends to moon him and we're off.

After a few moments Jerry says, “You take her above, Tom. I'm going below.” Tom slips into the captain's chair, dog in his lap, happy as a clam.

“Is there anything I can do?” I ask.

They both look at me and shrug, wondering what there is I could possibly do. “No,” Jerry says, “you can just relax.” But I don't want to relax. I want to be busy. I don't want to be a passenger; I want to be part of the crew. On the other hand we've only been sailing for three minutes and I have no idea what there is to do.

I climb below and settle into a seat at the bow. I am squinting in the afternoon sun, the wind at my face as the Black merges with the Mississippi. Here the river is wide and rolling, its surface a blue gray sea. To my right is Minnesota with its hilly, mountainous rises. On my left, Wisconsin is flat, not from glaciers, Jerry tells me; the river just carved this gully for itself.

As we enter the main channel, I begin to weep. It is inexplicable to me because I haven't cried in weeks. But now I weep for my father, who can't see this, and my daughter, who has left home. I cry because I have no idea why I am here or what I am doing. I am sailing into a great unknown with strangers. I do not know what awaits me, and I weep for those times that will never return.

I am crying as Jerry taps on the glass. I pull my White Sox cap down low so he can't see my eyes. “A pair of bald eagles,” he says, pointing. “At three o'clock.” At first I'm not sure what he means. Are a couple of eagles due to arrive in the afternoon? But then I understand this is seaman's talk.

The sky becomes a cosmic watch, time emblazoned there. Jerry hands me my binoculars. High above I see the eagles, circling one another, dancing in the sky.

STORM

7

F
OR A
time after he died, I heard my father's voice. He came to me when I was swimming or doing yoga. When I was on the subway. Always when I was alone. He'd say normal things, the kinds of messages you'd leave on someone's answering machine. “Hi, Mary. Just checking up on you.”

Often he spoke in aphorisms and clichés. “There are no problems, only solutions.” “I never make a decision until it happens.” “Roll with the punches.” “Go with the flow.” It wasn't a hallucination or a dream or anything crazy. It was simply his voice.

When I was small, my father was the one who put me to bed. He tucked me in with a story and a song. In the darkness of my room I listened to his tenor's lilt. My mother was never part of these nightly rituals. She'd blow me a kiss from the doorway, her silhouette framed in light. But every night my father sat at the edge of my bed.

The stories varied, but the song was always the same: “The Whiffenpoof Song.” “We're poor little lambs who have gone astray … poor little lambs who have lost the way.” It was a sad song to sing to a child, but I wanted to hear it over and over again.

I hadn't heard my father's voice in a while, not since I started taking the drugs, and I was sorry about that, but now as we head out on the river, it comes back. I hear my father say, “Life is one big compromise. If you can get that into your head, you'll do all right.” But what compromises do I need to make now?

“If you listen, you'll learn,” he tells me.