After a minute Elsie came over and refilled his coffee cup. “Is he awful mad?”

“He ain’t happy. When’s Ted coming back?”

“He told us he’d return on this afternoon’s train.”

“I hope he finds out more than I did.”

“Who’s going to cover for him, the colored pianist?”

“Yours truly.”

“Oh.”

He smiled at her. “Don’t worry. I’ll play like it counts.” Up on the roof Fred began to run scales of weeping notes, the whistles rising in pitch as they warmed in the blasting steam.

About one-thirty he got down to the hot dance floor and put up the lid on the piano, a six-foot-eight George Steck, a tough, loud instrument tolerant of the river’s dampness. As the first ticket holders began to roam the big boat he warmed up, playing “Nola” at a moderate tempo and nodding to the five other band members as they walked up: Zack Stimson, the banjo player; Mike Gauge, the clarinetist; Freddie Peat, drummer; Felton Bicks, cornetist; and tuba player Jackie van Pelt. The men fell into the song one at a time and swapped the lead around for fifteen minutes, letting Sam have the fancy ending to himself.

The band checked their instruments, getting ready for the long haul. Zack leaned over and asked politely, “Where’s Ted?”

“He’s laying out today. Going for some information on his little girl.”

Zack shook his head and bent down to tune his banjo. “We could use her right about now.”

Sam frowned at the remark. “Well, how’m I doing?”

“Doin’ okay, but I can tell you mostly play by yourself. No offense. Ted and us, we’re used to each other.”

The big whistle hollered up the Natchez bluff, and four young couples walked up, looking expectantly at the band, so Zack started strumming “Nobody but You” and the others landed on the melody like bees on a daisy. Captain Stewart skirted the edge of the dance floor, listened to three measures, and kept walking. When Sam had to fake a section, he heard Freddie Peat laugh out loud. He remembered the melody and what was coming up and relaxed, glancing now and then through an open door at shoreline willows flowing past along with the smokestacks of tugboats and ferries. When Mrs. Benton blew the whistle again and turned out for the main channel, the breeze began to pour in through the dance floor’s many windows and this, too, was what the customers were here for, escape from the soul-melting heat onshore. Twelve couples danced right in front, and a steward walked by sprinkling dance wax at their feet. Soon more dancers came out, the shy ones and the young ones, their steps melding with the music and the scenery passing by in the windows as if it were all part of the same song. He watched the back of a woman who’d begun two-stepping by herself, but when she turned Sam spotted the three-year-old she was holding, his arm high in his mother’s hand. He dropped a beat when he saw that and heard Zack call out, “Steady.” It’s what parents did, teach their kids to dance. He shouldn’t have been surprised. But for much of the song his timing was imperfect as he kept his attention on her, an ordinary-looking woman made distinctive by her eyes as she watched the boy feel her movements and learn that music and motion belonged together. He wondered if his own son would have learned to dance or sing, and he guessed probably so. His wife would’ve taught him, and at the thought of Linda he was filled with longing for the feel of her in his arms on a big dance floor. This pained him but the music moved him on, his fingers climbing an arpeggio so hard to execute it hurt him out of remembering and drew him back into the song. He turned his head, and Zack nodded.

FOR THE NIGHT TRIP, the black orchestra wore new tuxedos. Some dancers who’d never heard the New Orleans sound stayed back for a few tunes, leaning on roof supports or window frames trying to figure if it was all right to have fun with the band’s efforts. But the younger ones, or those who’d gone out on excursion boats earlier in the season or last year, they knew what to expect and stretched their steps. Pulled by the music, they walked on the notes, the women turning and shimmying, throwing the spangled tassels on their dresses straight out until their youth sparked like struck flint on the rumbling dance floor. Sam kept watch at the edge of the crowd, shaking his head at how much better this band was than the daylight group. When the clarinetist went off the page into his own riff some dancers stopped to listen and bounce in place, it was that good.

Elsie came down to check tables for burning cigarettes and brushed by him, pulling at his coat. “Lucky, he didn’t come back.”

“What?” He took her arm and walked her to the outside rail just as the boat shaved by the point of a big island.

“Ted told me he’d come into the station on the three-thirty train. August went up the hill to meet him, but he wasn’t on the coach.”

“Was that the last train?”

“Yes.” She balled up a fist and held it against her lips.

“That country’s slow going on a horse. The trip just took longer than he thought it would, that’s all.” He could tell she wasn’t fooled, and wished he were a better liar.

“We’re pulling out for Vicksburg after this trip.”

“He’ll know that. He’ll come up there on tomorrow’s train.”

“You think so?” He saw in her worried eyes how much she loved Ted.

“Aw, yeah. Now you go walk those tables on the other side before the captain comes along.” He watched her push through the doors and then looked down the roiling river, thinking about the Skadlocks, the dark woods, and the dog. “Lord,” he said aloud. The dog. He tried to imagine what experience in Cincinnati would prepare the musician for Louisiana swamps and the Skadlocks. He wished he had gone back with him, for Ralph Skadlock in particular had seemed a maimed soul capable of anything. He remembered that the outlaw knew where Troumal was, that speck of a place down on the Texas line. Was the slaughter of his family some sort of legend among the cutthroats of Arkansas?

Lucky walked down to the main deck and back toward the boilers, where he found August in the dim coal galley, backlit by angry yellow fire and shoving a long clinker rod into a firebox, poking up the flames. Sam grabbed a pair of black cotton gloves off a crossbeam and held them out to him in the dust-choked companionway. “Put these on and don’t let me catch you working without them. You can’t play saxophone with burnt-off fingers.”

August smiled, his blond hair lit with a bituminous glow. “Hey, they put me to firing full-time just this morning. Another half-dollar a day.” As he pulled on the gloves Lucky saw that his nostrils were black with coal dust. “Why’d you leave all the swells to come done here?”

“Just to check on you. You worried about your dad?”

August pulled out the cherry-red hook, hung it next to the fire door, and grabbed a shovel out of the chute. “Naw, he can take care of himself. He’s gonna find my sister, you know.”

Lucky watched him throw coal and tried to remember himself at fourteen, when some days he knew for sure that everything was going to turn out well, that nothing else bad could possibly happen to anyone he was close to, that life would treat him fairly. He’d felt this way up until his son died. And then there were the sorrows of France, where he finally understood that the family stories weren’t legends, but reports of real killings. He watched the boy labor, almost envious of the mindless work. “Hey, you want to sit in tomorrow with the day-trip band?”

August didn’t break his shoveling rhythm. He was counting loads, as someone had taught him that morning. “Sure,” he said through his wide smile. “That’d be great.” He slammed the fire door, set the ash vent, and moved away to the next boiler, sliding further into the hissing darkness.