River-Horse: A Voyage Across America (48 page)

The Professor mentioned he’d seen a fisherman near a pickup truck just below the bridge, and Pilotis and I took off running. My friend’s face seemed to say, “We’ve had it. This time Mister Lucky isn’t going to escape.” My mind, I’m afraid, was about to agree. “Will you help us?” Mate yelled down to the fisherman. “No time to lose!” The man walked all too deliberately to his truck and drove us back. As fast as the crew could work, we double-chained his pickup to the tow wagon. The trailer was now in nearly to its axle. Trying not to hurry and spin the tires and dig in deeper, we put the vehicles into gear, but nothing happened except strange sounds of steel under great stress, the engines pulling so hard I warned everyone away from the chain in case it parted. We took protection behind
Nikawa
and pushed on her stern while the trailer tried to break the suction of the muck; now the sounds were more sexual than mechanical as the wheels began to rise from their slimy pits, and suddenly our venture depended on the weakest link in our chain. “Push, you sissies!” Pilotis yelled. “Lean into it, you mama’s boys!” And we did, and with a last slurping lurch the wheels came up and out and onto the upper end of our ramps, and our whole kit and caboodle rolled free and onto stable ground. Pilotis scowled at me: “Next time you disregard your instinct and take on the Skid Demon, I’m relieving you of command.”

Our Montana samaritan said, “This bank is one nasty bastard, and it’s like that because ranchers here keep opposing anybody who suggests putting in a good ramp. They do it everywhere because they don’t want people using the river. They think the Missouri is theirs.” As he started back to his fishing hole, he said, “Oh, by the way, welcome to Montana, the place where they say, ‘If it ain’t yours, it’s mine, so get the hell out.’ It ought to be our new state motto.”

We drove into Culbertson, three miles off the river, a bland little western plains place, once described this way: “Just when or how the town came into existence is not known, but the theory that there was a town gained currency between 1888 and 1892. In the latter year, however, a certain Lucy Isbel stepped off the train and spent some time looking for it.” We found Culbertson readily enough and also a couple of rooms and a garden hose to flush mud from
Nikawa
and the trailer. After showers and a small ration of River Relief, Pilotis and I joined our mates in a railroad passenger car turned into a café—it wasn’t a classic diner, just a railroad car turned into a café.

For the last couple of weeks we had made a standing bet about who first could divine the name of a waitress (waiters in rural America are as rare as passenger pigeons). The contest nearly got the Professor punched in South Dakota when he guessed Edna, a moniker from another time, for a woman just coming into her age-sensitive years. Pilotis, following some maverick interpretation of the odds, repeated the same name from café to café, but I tried to consider not only age but also locale, speech, and hairstyle. (I’ll say here, without concern about jactitation or advancing the narrative too far, that I eventually won with Stephanie, a guess predicated on sentences of this order: “So like, are you guys like in a boat or what?”) The wager usually amused our waitresses and got them talking about things beyond meat loaf. That evening Charmaine, toting a touchy load of cynicism not uncommon to the recently divorced, said, “Where you coming from to get way up here to Nowhereville?” Pilotis: “New York City.” She: “What interstate does that?” The Photographer: “It’s no interstate—it’s rivers, lakes, a canal.” She looked closely, evaluating us, then said, “Bullshit.” Having just ascended thirty-eight miles of a wrung-out river, a route more damp than watered, I could see her point.

F
ROM CULBERTSON
to Fort Peck Dam, the next place we could put
Nikawa
into the water, was just over 140 miles, a distance we’d traveled in her on our longest outing. If we averaged thirty miles a day in the canoe, we could make it to the reservoir in five days, a destination reachable by automobile in a little over an hour. These may be mere numbers to you, a reader seated comfortably somewhere, but on the river they are the essence of one’s life. Sixty minutes in our canoe crossing the northern plains could seem something like the following “sentence,” provided you read it slowly and are unafraid of losing your place and backtracking and you skip not a single word even after you get the idea (call this armchair participatory rivering):

River river river river river river river river river river river river river et cetera river river river river river river river river river river river river river and then some river river river river river hot river river river river river river river river river river river river river river mud river river river river pay attention to the river river river river goddamn rocks river river river river river river river river river river river river river river oh boy river river river river enough river river river river river river river river nothing so endless as a river river river river except the universe itself river river river or time river river river river river even the sky has edges river river river river river on on up up river river river river river river river river oh jeezis river river river river river river river river river Möbius strip river river river river river always river river river river river more river river river river river river river
river river river river ever more river river river river river river river the river asks had enough river river river river river river river river river river river against the river river long river river I’m ready to get stuck river river river more of you river river river river river river river river river river river river river river river river sandbar river river river river river river river river river river river river river where are the river birds river river even they find this stretch too much river river river river river river river river river river river river O Missouri river river river river river river I know you’re testing us river river river river river river river butt hurts river river river river is that as fast as that peckerwood of a river motor can go river river river river river river river the way’s open river but are we proceeding river river river the Great River Boredom Test river river river river river river river river river river river river river me and my cockamamie ideas river river river river river river river river river river river no wonder Professor talks of leaving river river see what you did to him river river river river river naughty old river river river river river river river river I’m talking to you river river river river river river river river river river river river river river river where are those Ears when I want them river river river river river a brook can laugh say the poets river river river but who ever heard of a river laughing river river river long long long long river river river river river river river river river river river river river oh mama river river river river how many more days of this river river river river river river river river river avoid river irritation river river river river river river all I know is river river river river wet galactic equator of a river river river river river the river is an eraser river river river river river river river river erasing my mind river river river river long river makes traveler insane river river river river river river river river river river river river river and this is only one hour on the river river river river river river river William Clark would understand this river sentence river river not a sentence river river river river no predicate here river river just all subject river river river river no I’m subject river river you river are predicate river river you river are not a noun river river you’re a verb river I’m rivered river river sing to me Billy! river river river river sing me a river song river river river river we got no fiddler Billy! river river river river river river river river river you big goddamn et cetera river river and you got no stop in you river river river river you don’t so much as pause river river river river river you don’t got commas river river river river river ceaseless river river river river river river river but please river river what we want is a fuckin period

Now, good reader, you have the idea.

A ship’s logbook, my pattern for this account of our try at a transcontinental voyage, will often take liberties with time and distance by indulging freely in compression so that a reading of it gives information but hardly a sense of what the voyage felt like. To this point I have given at least a chapter to each day on the water, but to do so for our canoe ascent to Fort Peck Dam would try your attention beyond endurance, just as the real miles did ours in the doing of them, even though you, wearied, numbed, and perhaps cross, would come away from those verbal Missouri miles with a keen sense of
how it was.

Most of that long segment below Fort Peck presented the Great Plains at their blandest, hours of low earthy banks just high enough, like an English roadside hedge, to keep us from seeing beyond the river so that even our vision couldn’t escape to bring relief. The Missouri became a kind of black hole, and our souls, like light, were unable to escape. As if condemned prisoners, we frequently had only blind endurance to carry us on. One day, a person on death row may read that sentence of a river sentence and surely will feel it as no speed reader ever could.

What follows are edited excerpts from my logbook, concisions I hope you, good lector, will fill in with what you already know and perhaps expect: shoals, the incessant contesting the river, the perpetual hunt for the most promising chute, the ceaseless crossing from bank to bank, the hard thunks against the canoe, the occasional shocks that rolled us gunwale to gunwale and made us wish we were on foot, sun and heat, the aluminum canoe glaring almost as much as the endless water, the continual unspoken realization we were never as far upriver as we either thought or hoped. During it all, not once did the canoe reach a certifying position before I estimated it would, and everything was farther away than we ever believed. Such eternal self-deception helped us continue and sometimes made me think the title of this book should be
In Praise of Ignorance.

MONDAY, DAY ONE

Launch canoe at the perilous mudhole; crew happy to be in tow wagon today. Morning clear, bright, breezy. Motor starts on first pull and
P[ilotis] says, “That can’t be a good sign.” Indeed, an hour later, fuel line from gas tank gets plugged, and we go dead in water; repair and proceed. Standing Rock Reservation will be on our right all the way to Fort Peck. I tell P Continental Divide is now exactly halfway between us and Pacific. Not uplifted by report, P says: “I thought we were closer.” Around Devil’s Elbow and past site of old trading posts Fort Kipp and Fort Stewart. Beyond four-mile-wide floodplain lie rounded, eroded hills, but most of what we see are soft banks spending themselves into river to give the Missouri its essence of mud as filé does gumbo.

Mergansers, mallards, canvasbacks, shovelers—ducky world. Almost without exception, since above Harlem River we meet no other boats or people, and America seems land empty of residents; here, our fellow citizens are magpies, geese, gulls, terns, pelicans, the latter rising into echelons to wing past, their shadows sometimes falling over us and giving the only shade on sun-blasted river—if we could harness them into aerial umbrella! Above Hardscrabble Creek small rattlesnake swims toward us, so buoyant it appears airborne; when I reach out paddle, snake quickly coils, hoists tail like battle ensign, feints at blade; after we pass, it unspirals to weave on. Why would snake swim river? Can it conceive of another side to life? Do serpents have curiosity like bears that go over mountains? From cottonwood, two great-horned owls watch squintily, one yawning at the river; you said it, brother. Butterfly, with much exertion, comes alongside and overtakes us: new definition of our slow ascent.

Miles, miles, on, on, the river. The Great Ears hear tedium of my mind and correct it by stopping motor in swift channel, and we start drifting back, losing what we’d just gained; paddle to shore in midst of this grand privacy; pull off motor housing to find slipped throttle cable; reconnect and set off, now relieved for few moments to have boredom again.

Strange hump-and-pinnacle of soft rock weather-eaten into likeness of kneeling camel. Begin looking for tow crew as (we guess) we approach Brockton. Close to where Black Duck Indian village once was, see orange flag waving among trees; god, I love that flag. Make landing across from Mortarstone Bluffs. Because all towns along here are old Indian agencies next to railroad, they aren’t on river but against tracks; no charm whatsoever; only things near the Missouri are sewage treatment pools.

In small tavern we meet Brendan Ryan, sixty-five-year-old Irishman from County Mayo, who left on bicycle from nearly same spot in New Jersey as we but five days later; even with rest periods he’s caught us and
will reach Pacific long before we can. Listening in, bartender says, “You guys’ trip is a WPA gig just like construction up at Fort Peck Dam in the thirties.” I explain to Ryan about Work Projects Administration but barkeep interrupts, “No, WPA stands for We Poke Along. Those boys building the dam got issued shovels with rope handles so they couldn’t lean on them.” Irishman sees this as sportive folklore.

TUESDAY, DAY TWO

Denver sandwich for breakfast. Up road to visit Lakota and Nakota Museum where poignant exhibit about Indians once incarcerated in old Hiawatha Insane Asylum (P: “A cruelly ironic allusion”); some inmates bore wonderful names: Mrs. Two-Teeth, Sits-in-It, Maud Magpie, Cecile Comes-at-Night, Drag-Toes, Robert Brings-Plenty, Yells-at-Night, James Black-Eye, Guy Crow-Neck, Poke-Ah-Dab-Ab. Photos of forlorn, lost faces.

As morning warms, put canoe in; terrain continues much as last few days; not unpleasing country, just too much of it between us and mountains. Water at first drably olive and murky except for reaches where certain angle of light makes them wobbly blue mirror reflecting sky. The beauty. Pass low riverbank with dead steer hanging on edge, dehydrated skin collapsed over rib cage like tattered and fallen tent, everything so dry even flies ignore it. River for hundreds of miles has been virtually free of litter other than occasional plastics: pop containers, fishermen’s bleach-jug floats, broken-up Styrofoam coolers.