Sam looked around at sixty or so passengers and saw that they were nice people, well dressed and mature, not some unimportant kids he could bully into behaving. He tried to get between everybody at once and found himself in the middle of a jabbering cloud of alcoholic breath. The polite air was turning sour when the son-in-law, who was four tables over, tried to get to the argument by stepping on a wicker-bottom chair, but his foot went through it and he danced three hops and fell onto another couple’s table, his hand getting stuck in a small metal water pitcher. At this point everyone started to laugh, except the son-in-law and the old man, who slowly bent over and felt the floor for his cane and spectacles. Sam called over a waiter to dry the tables and chairs and get everybody reseated and supplied with fresh glasses and ice. The steam whistle blew a warning, followed by a rising, shrill signal from the starboard side as a ferryboat cut its engines only twenty-five feet away, its yellow running lights shining angrily, its boiler’s fire door a blinding orange star traveling sideways in the night. The passengers calmed down, distracted by the fact that the ferry had come out from its landing without waiting for or even seeing the Ambassador at all. Sam watched the ferry slide astern, hoping that everyone would realize that a couple of spilled drinks or a rude remark was nothing compared to a midnight collision spilling hundreds of folks in deep river, but then the son-in-law began throwing punches and it took him ten minutes of pulling and pushing to break up the fight.
UPSTAIRS, the band members were running with sweat, thumping out a shimmy number as five hundred dancers stepped and turned in a massive wink of patent leather and sequins, silk ties and hair oil, good New Orleans dancers who knew what to do with a downbeat making the old deck jump. The waiters were skating around the edge of the action, sliding their shoes on the dance wax, delivering sandwiches and mixers to the people at the double layer of tables lining the walls. The expressions of most of the dancers seemed overly happy, and Sam scanned the faces of the band members, who were too busy selling the tune to exhibit any worry, and indeed no one showed a negative thought, caught up in some kind of capsule of delight, at least while the music kept everything in motion. And then he saw a still silhouette sitting at the stern end of the dance deck, and he walked over because her presence contradicted the motion-drunk room. It was Elsie, sitting alone at the last table, her hair wound in pigtails above her ears, wearing a plain dark dress.
“Hi. You on break?”
“In case you don’t know, the staff can’t join in the fun. We’ll be at the dock in ten minutes and as soon as the lights come up, I’m to start stripping the tables.”
She looked tired, and he wanted to say something to cheer her up, but all he said was, “Work you to death, don’t they?”
“Well, let’s just say I need to keep busy.”
“Ted still waiting on ’em upstairs?”
She nodded. “I was waitressing with him but they cut me loose a few minutes ago. It’ll only take a half hour to clear everybody off. This is a pretty mild crowd.”
The whistle moaned out a landing signal and the band began to play “Home, Sweet Home.” Sam felt a tug on his arm and he turned to face a thickset man also wearing a mate’s cap. He introduced himself as Aaron Swaneli, the first mate.
“How’d I miss meeting you?”
“It’s my bidness to lay low,” Swaneli said. “That way I can keep an eye on things, you know?” He made a sideways motion with his head.
“You’re the power man. Got a blackjack on you.”
Swaneli put a hand on Sam’s shoulder and squeezed it. “Look, right now I need you to go topside. The hardlegs up there are smokin’ and all in love this time of night. Walk the rail and look for cigarettes they’ve tossed. Every butt you see, lit or not, put your toe on it and twist three times, okay?”
The lights came up on the last note, and the band began to take down music and pack their instruments. People crowded the stairs, and Sam walked up through them and toured the deck, first the open area, then the café, which was hot and nearly empty. He stepped out into the night and looked forward to where Mr. Brandywine then ascended a little filigreed bridge on the hurricane deck. He raised a megaphone and called directions out to a man standing by a steam capstan. The big boat seemed asleep in the water at that point, waiting for some type of decision the current was supposed to make. Finally, Mr. Brandywine turned the megaphone up to the pilothouse’s dark windows. “Mrs. Benton! Give her a nudge.”
A bell jingled in the engine room and two snoring chuffs jetted from the escape pipes as the boat leaned into the wharf and tapped a piling right where a deckhand held a hemp fender against the hull. The fore and aft lines went out and a stop-engine bell rattled as the boat drifted in snug.
It took an hour to clear the last passengers off, a too-jolly batch of overweight young women. Sam did indeed stamp out a dozen lit cigarettes, and also woke up a drunk boy in the men’s toilet and walked him ashore. Several people lingered under the dock lights, staring at the steamer as though they couldn’t quite believe their ride was over. Their faces showed they’d just been exiled back to their ordinary selves, and they didn’t seem to like it one bit. He walked to the end of the loading stage and surveyed for himself the many lights jeweling the decks, the tired porters sweeping the dark upper walkways, the kitchen staff wiping the third-deck tables and chairs, turning them up to make room for a mop-down of spilled drinks, food, trash paper, and smashed candy. He thought of the cooks swamping down the giant ranges in the hot night, the tobacco-smudged and sticky dance floor, the piss-fouled bathrooms and damaged main-deck lounge already prowled by the ship’s carpenter. It was all fun for somebody, he guessed, but his back and legs were killing him from the night’s climbing and scuffle.
About one-thirty he rolled into his bunk, jammed against the ceiling of his cabin, and a minute later Charlie Duggs came in, stripped down to his drawers, and hung his clothes on two sixteen-penny nails. “Oh, man,” he said in the dark, “I feel like I fell through the paddlewheel.”
After two minutes, Sam sensed that he was already falling asleep, and gratitude to whatever controls man’s slumber flowed through him like a medicine. Then Charlie yawned and said, “Don’t forget to roll out, wash your armpits, and buck up for the ten-thirty harbor tour.”
AT EIGHT the next morning the two of them were eating eggs, fried potatoes, and onions with the rest of the crew. The musicians had gone drinking in town after the boat docked and were eating out on the open part of the deck, moping about like wounded soldiers. Charlie folded a piece of white bread in half and waved it in the air over his plate for emphasis. “On the way down from Cincinnati we stopped at an odd little town in Indiana, I think, and ran an afternoon trip. I was nailing down new chocks for the piano during the break, and then Elsie and Ted did a number with the little girl and some of the lady passengers gathered around the bandstand and got this look in their eye like they was ready to start bawlin’. I don’t know why. It was a happy little song. Maybe they thought she was a come-alive baby doll or something.” He took a heaping bite of potatoes.
Sam straightened in his chair. “Where was the town, exactly?”
“That was a busy trip. It might have been in Kentucky, now that I think about it. Every time she sang, the mommies would come up to the bandstand. Maybe they were imagining what kind of life she might have in front of her. Everywhere she sang her two little numbers, she got the same reaction.”