Chapter Thirty-six
ON A BLUSTERY JULY MORNING a west wind drove the Ambassador into a landing barge. There was no denying that it would have to limp down to Davenport for hull repair. Sam had been calling Linda and giving reports of how he was managing the children. He had discussed certain things with August. When told that the boat would be out of business for ten days, he loaded up August and Lily and took the train south, changing in Memphis and riding through the cinder-strewn heat and humidity down to New Orleans. The three of them showed up at his house sooty from two days on the rails, and his wife met them at the front door with a frown, the baby in her arms.
She thrust Christopher at Sam and examined August and Lily. “Are y’all Catholic?”
“Yes, ma’am.” August put down his suitcase. “But would it make a difference?”
She waved them into the house. “It sure makes it easier if we all go to the same place on Sundays.” She fixed everybody glasses of iced tea, then sat Lily next to her on the sofa and asked all of them questions for an hour, paying particular attention to her. Sam could tell she was trying to get a feel for how things might be.
That night, after the children were asleep, Linda crawled in next to him, and he could feel her whole body decompress toward rest.
“Well, what you think?” He hoped he knew, but with Linda, he could never say for sure.
“I never saw a four-year-old so glad to get into a bathtub.”
“I know we can’t afford another child.”
She laughed curtly. “Baby, we can hardly afford ourselves.”
“August will stay on the boat with me. He’s a real worker.”
“You know as well as me he can only work till September. He’s got to finish school.”
“But I’ll be back right after that at the end of the season. He can get pickup work in his spare time.”
“We’ll talk about this later. Just let me try to get used to them.” She put an arm around his neck. “Come here and let’s not talk about workin’ at something.”
HE SAW HER watch August during the week, how he practiced on the back porch and wrote in the margins of sheet music while tapping his foot to some rhythm winding inside his imagination. She took him along to the market and reported that he’d asked for things Lily liked to eat. Little potatoes, he said. She liked little red potatoes. At the house, August pulled grass along the walk, went after the weeds next to the street with a sling blade. He complained about the heat, the mosquitoes, but Linda didn’t hold that against him because she did the same.
The girl watched Linda as though she might evanesce at any moment, trailing behind her, showing no affection, her bright eyes searching and expectant.
On the day before he and August were to catch the train, Linda sidled up to him in the front room, catching his hand as he set the screen-door latch for the night and pushing him out onto the front porch.
“What?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to make sure you understood that things were all right. You know, as far as Lily’s concerned. August isn’t a problem. He can handle himself already.”
“I know we didn’t talk much.”
“Yeah, you just assumed things, as usual. Well, don’t worry, I think we can raise her. But she’s not normal.”
He looked over her head into the house. “What’s that mean?”
They could hear August talking to his sister. She squealed, and August went past the kitchen door with Lily riding his back.
“She’s kind of disconnected. I don’t know how to explain it. She won’t climb into my lap or give me a hug. Maybe it’s because she’s so smart. You can see it in her eyes. She drinks everything in. Did you see her in church on Sunday? I mean, she fell asleep during the sermon, but everything else she watched with those shiny little eyes. I taught her the Hail Mary twice, and now she knows it every word.”
He nodded and looked into the kitchen toward the sound of knees thumping the floor. “I’m trying not to teach her too much music. I’m scared she’ll get bored or just forget it. If I had to guess, I’d say she’ll be a lot better piano player than me.”
Linda put an arm around his waist. She seemed worried. “It’s like she’s waiting for something to happen.”
“Honey, she’s used to a lot of somethings happening to her.”
She shook her head. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe not.”
“I’ll bring in some money. I’ll make it work.”
“For her, you’ll have to.” She pulled open the screen and halfway into the room stopped and turned to him. “I know why you brought those kids into our home. Just don’t forget what they’ll mean for me.”
“Pretty lady, I won’t.”
“I want a house someday.”
“We’ll get one.”
“We don’t have a penny in savings.”
“We’ll get one, you’ll see.”
THE REST OF THE SEASON the boat ran town to town, a different landing each night. The dance floor was worn to a dull brown abrasion, the outside paint an occlusion of soot despite repeated scrubbings, the paddlewheel a barewood rack of planks washed to splinters. The old boat was waterlogged, rain-wracked, and out of true, its hogchains and turnbuckles bleeding rust and the hull warped out of its proper curve. The whole crew was as weary as a thin-walled boiler, waiting for payoff and bonus and release.
The weather turned cool early and the Ambassador began to tramp south, chasing the receding summer. In mid-September the crowds thinned out, except for the Friday and Saturday runs, and eventually, in October at Memphis, a cold front blasted in off the plains and all but killed the excursion business. Captain Stewart decided to try a few more towns below Memphis, and on a day of a big west wind, Mr. Brandywine was at the wheel fighting current as they started south. Mrs. Benton and Sam sat on the lazy bench watching whitecaps rise up in the channel. The boat was to land at a dock near the mouth of the Wolf River but wasn’t traveling where it was steered, commencing a dizzying wander. The pilothouse glazing rattled in the wind, and arching currents kicked up a dirty froth midriver.
Mr. Brandywine raised a hand for the whistle ring and blew a landing signal. “I’m going straight in with her back to the blow.” It was unusual for him to announce a maneuver, and Sam traded glances with Nellie Benton, wondering if the old man was hinting for advice. He watched the east bank come up in the bright midday. The pilot rang a stop bell and let the wind shove him along. Sam looked down at the water, figuring motion. Nellie Benton said nothing but seemed to be watching for wind direction in the trees. When Mr. Brandywine rang a backing bell, the pilothouse trembled as the paddlewheel grabbed water, and Sam knew he was trying to pull the boat parallel to the dock and let the breeze push him in. But then the wind came up hard, whistling through the rooftop gingerbread and popping the jackstaff flags. They were a hundred yards offshore with the stern swinging in hard. Mr. Brandywine rang a double gong, and after a moment the escape pipes barked up gouts of exhausting steam as the engines fought to draw the boat back from the wharf. Sam stood up. Steamboats were always underpowered things, and the wind treated them like box kites. Feeling one going out from under your feet, you knew that something terrible was going to happen in three or four minutes and that there was nothing anyone could do except drift along on what seemed like a county-sized piece of wood and wait for the bump that might break it open like a packing box, sending everyone, sleeping or awake, into the muddy current. Mr. Brandywine put the wheel over hard, but the wind was beating both the engines and the rudders, so he blew a warning whistle of four shorts, watched the dark dock pilings grow bigger in his port windows and said, over his shoulder, “Here’s the end of this season.” He rang the stop-engine bell right before the stern crashed into a cluster of pilings, but the signal was too late. A series of jolts shook the Ambassador and a spray of shattered lumber and long bolts flew up over the stern as the paddlewheel beat itself apart against the dock. The boat rocked severely shoreward, then leveled as the deckhands threw out lines. Later, Sam found out that the piano had rumbled over its roller chocks and chased a busboy a hundred feet down the dance floor.