Houseboat Girl (5 page)

As they neared the city, there was more traffic on the river—dredges and towboats and barges and motorboats. Soon the sky was darkened by city smoke and ahead lay the railroad bridge across the Ohio. There were two other highway bridges out from Cairo, one from Illinois to Kentucky and the other from Illinois to Missouri.

“Is this Cairo?” asked Patsy. “I don’t see any town. I thought it was a great big city.”

“It’s big enough,” said Mama, “back up behind that wall. It’s bigger than River City, but not as big as Memphis.”

The city was circled “by a concrete flood wall that rose up from the river like the ramparts of a walled town. Cairo’s location was a dangerous one, locked between two mighty rivers. With the Ohio on one side and the Mississippi on the other, the city had had to protect itself from innumerable floods and annual high water. Hence the great sea wall built of concrete.

Abe Foster came to a place where there was a sloping rock wall, which might have been a former steamboat landing. He edged the houseboat in and tied up. Milly had on her good dress, ready to go to town. But Daddy said no, there wasn’t time. The sky had become cloudy and he was afraid of rough weather ahead.

“I’ll get my rope and supplies at the Boat Store and be right back,” he said. “I want to get down to Wickliffe early. There’s a good harbor at the mouth of Mayfield Creek.”

“Buy us a book of river maps,” said Mama.

“Who wants a map?” asked Daddy. “I can’t read it.”

“Well, I can,” said Mama, “and I like, to know where we’re going.”

Milly took off her good dress, disappointed. When Daddy came back with the rope, he brought the big yellow book of Lower Mississippi River Maps, put out by the United States Army Engineers. He tossed it into Mama’s lap, and Mama got out her glasses to look at it. Patsy looked, too. Map No. 1 showed Mound City and Cairo. Patsy followed their day’s course with her finger. She found Wickliffe and Mayfield Creek a few miles below.

Soon the houseboat was moving again, drifting lazily on the current, no power needed. The clouds had lifted a little and the river was still placid. The Fosters passed by a group of shanty-boats, some beached in a grove of cottonwoods and others afloat along the river bank. They came to Cairo Point, where towboats and dozens of barges were tied up. Cairo Point was a towboat terminal. Here barges of coal, grain and minerals were transferred to other routes for continued hauls up or down the Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois or Ohio rivers.

“Where does the Ohio River end and the Mississippi begin?” asked Patsy. “How can you tell?”

“The water from the Missouri is yellow and muddy,” said Mama. “It brings a lot of mud with it and dumps it into the Mississippi above St. Louis. The Missouri has always been called the Big Muddy. The Ohio just flows gently into the Mississippi, then gradually the water gets muddier and the current swifter, and you know you are in the Mississippi.”

The sky grew cloudy again, and they began to notice the change. The river was no longer the placid Ohio. Driftwood sailed past on a speedier current. The wind began to blow up choppy waves. Daddy stayed in the cabin boat behind, controlling the course of the houseboat. He had to steer carefully along the dangerous Wickliffe shore.

Mama and Patsy kept on studying the river map. Patsy saw that all the islands were numbered, starting at Cairo and going south.

“I’m going to count all the islands as we go along,” she said.

“That’ll be a hard job,” said Mama. “Many of them are missing, some are washed away or joined to the mainland. The river keeps changing its banks all the time, but the state lines never change.”

Daddy seemed to know where he was going without looking at a map. Before long he nosed the boat into a little cove at the mouth of Mayfield Creek, below Wickliffe. Just in time, too. The lines were all made fast and Daddy was washing up on the back porch, when the downpour came. It made a heavy tattoo on the flat tar-paper roof of the houseboat.

Mama had a pot of coffee on the stove and had started supper. She fixed baked pork and beans, mashed potatoes and iced tea. The houseboat rocked on the waves, but it was snug and cozy inside. It felt just like home.

“B
UT
I
THOUGHT WE’D
keep going,” said Patsy, “and not stop till we got to New Orleans.” Mama laughed.

“Nobody said anything like that.”

“And here all we did was to cross the river over to Kentucky,” the girl went on.

“You never can tell what you’ll do on the river,” said Mama.

“That’s why Daddy likes it so much. It’s a free life—he can do what he pleases. He’s his own boss. If he wants to go, he goes. If he wants to stay, he stays.”

“But if he likes the river so much, why doesn’t he stay on it?” asked Patsy.

“Stop fussing,” said Mama. “There’s good fishing here and we’re staying until Daddy feels like moving on.”

“Oh—I just want to see New Orleans
so bad!”
cried Patsy.

“Go and feed your chickens,” said Mama.

A month had passed and the Fosters were still at Mayfield Creek. It was a pleasant location in the chute between Island No. 1 and Cane Island, with a sloping river bank and trees for shade. They lived in the houseboat, fished up and down the river, and peddled the fish in nearby towns. Daddy had rented a second-hand Ford to drive around in.

“We might as well have stayed at River City,” said Patsy. “Daddy fished and sold fish there. He had his own little fish house and all the people in town came to buy from him.”

“There were three other fish houses in River City,” said Mama. “Daddy had too much competition.”

Fish, fish, fish! The Fosters’ whole life was nothing but fish. Sometimes Patsy wished she had never seen one. She never ate fish and she hated the constant fishy smell.

One morning Mama was washing clothes on the river bank. Daddy had strung the wire clothesline up between two trees. When Mama began to hang the clothes up, she looked at the sky.

“I hope it won’t rain,” she said. “Bring the clothespins here, Patsy.”

Patsy heard voices and looked up.

“Mama,” she said, “somebody’s comin’ to see us.”

A woman came down the river bank. She held two children by the hand, a boy of eight and a girl of ten.

“Howdy! How you folks doin’?” she called out.

Mrs. Foster said politely, “Good morning.”

“I’m Miz Preston,” the woman said. “I live in that two-story house up there on the road.”

“Glad to meet you,” said Mrs. Foster. She hung up the last pair of overalls and came over. “Come in and set down.” To Patsy she said, “Go get the clothes props and prop up the line.”

The woman followed but stopped at the stage plank.

“I seen your shack down here…” she began.

“My what?” asked Mrs. Foster.

“Your shack!” repeated Mrs. Preston. “Oh well, what do you call it, then?”

“I call it a houseboat,” said Mrs. Foster.

Patsy came up and stared at the newcomers. She had seen the children up by their house but had never spoken to them. They were nicely dressed and had socks and shoes on. Their hair was all slicked back. They stared back at her in return.

“On the Ohio River, it’s called a shantyboat,” explained Mrs. Foster, “but in Louisiana and Arkansas it’s a houseboat.,”

“Do you
live
on it?” asked Mrs. Preston.

“We sure do,” said Mrs. Foster. “Come on in, the stage plank will hold you. Come on in and set down.”

The women and children stepped across the plank warily.

“Aren’t you afraid your kids will get drownded?” Mrs. Preston asked.

“They’re too mean for that!” Mrs. Foster laughed.

Patsy spoke up. “We’re not either mean.”

“Well, Patsy is O. K.,” Mrs. Foster admitted. Tom the cat was rubbing against her skirts. “But between her and the cat, I don’t know which one is meanest!”

“Don’t she ever fall in?” asked the woman.

“Laws yes,” said Mrs. Foster. “Patsy’s my unluckiest one. She’s
always
fallin’ in the river.”

“I never let my two go near it,” said Mrs. Preston. “I don’t trust that old river as far as I can see it.” She held her children firmly by the hand.

Patsy looked at them in disgust. They were worse babies than Bunny and Dan. There would be no fun playing with them.

Mrs. Foster laughed. She and Mrs. Preston sat down on the leather couch.

“Fallin’ in is an old story with us,” Mrs. Foster went on. “That’s why I’m gettin’ gray hairs. Milly—she’s my oldest—learned how to swim at Memphis when she was four. She’d fallin’ and I’d tell her to get herself out and sure enough she would. Good thing she learned young, ’cause she’s had to haul all the others out. I don’t worry if Milly’s with ’em.”

“You don’t go off and leave ’em alone in this shack…I mean, on this shantyboat, do you?”

“Sure,” said Mrs. Foster. “Abe and I go peddling fish twice a week. That’s the way we make a living. Milly stays here and takes care of the kids.”

“How old is Milly?”

“She’s twelve, goin’ on thirteen,” said Mrs. Foster.

“But she acts like she’s twenty!” added Patsy.

“Patsy here is a real river rat!” Mrs. Foster went on. “She was born right in the middle of the Mississippi River. That was when we were at Nonconnah Creek, down below Memphis. That houseboat we had then was so small I called it the Cracker Box! All but two years of Patsy’s life has been spent on the river. That girl never lived in town in her life until we went to River City, Illinois.”

Mrs. Preston and her children looked at Patsy as if she were some kind of queer fish.

“How terrible!” said Mrs. Preston.

“One time she fell in and went under the barge and her daddy had to drag her out by the legs,” said Mrs. Foster. “That time she spit enough water, you’d a thought she was a camel!”

The women laughed.

“I can dog paddle now,” said Patsy. “Every day I go in the water and try it. I’m going to keep trying until I learn how to swim.”

“Oh, you’ll learn all right,” said Mama. “All my kids are real fish when it comes to water. They’ve never been scared of the river.”

“You folks want any milk?” asked Mrs. Preston. “With two cows, we got more’n we need. I got plenty to sell.”

“Milk?” asked Mrs. Foster. “No, thanks, we don’t need any. My kids don’t like it. They haven’t lived on land long enough to get to like it, I reckon.” She took her visitor into the houseboat to look it over.

“Well, I never!” said Mrs. Preston, when they came out on the porch again. “You’ve got it better than I have. With bottled gas and everything!”

“It’s our home,” said Mrs. Foster. “I try to have it nice. Of course we don’t hook up our electric lights unless we’re stayin’ a long time.”

The sky began to cloud over, so Mrs. Preston took her children and hurried home, afraid of rain.

“I hope my clothes will get dry,” said Mrs. Foster.

After the woman left, Patsy thought of the River City house and the neighbors there.

“I wonder how Pushcart Aggie’s parakeets are,” said Patsy. “I bet if I’d a asked her for it, she’d a given me one. A parakeet would make a nice pet for a houseboat.”

“Yes, if the cat didn’t eat it,” said Mama.

“Remember the Millers and the time Janey found a pearl?” asked Patsy.

“It takes more than a pearl to make a mussel-fisherman rich,” said Mama.

Patsy thought of the Cramer girls and Ginny and Lora and felt quite homesick. “When we goin’ back to River City, Mama?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said Mama. “Ask your daddy.”

Just then the johnboat came round the end of the fish barge.

“Come on, Patsy!” called Milly. “You goin’ with us?”

Patsy ran and jumped in the boat and Daddy started the outboard motor. They were headed down river to get shrimp for bait.

“It’s fixin’ to rain,” called Mama. “Don’t you think you’d better wait and go later?”

But her words were lost on the wind. The motor roared loudly and off they went. Soon they came to a sandy bank and got out. The two girls walked down the bank pulling the seine net. They scooped up the river shrimp and dumped them in the bait bucket. But Mama was right—it began to rain and the wind turned into a gale, so Daddy called them back to the johnboat.