River Queen (25 page)

“Y-yes.”

“Good,” Dallas said, stepping aside to let him pass. “I’m very glad we’ve come to an understanding, Ashby. Just make sure you don’t forget what I said.”

“And after you finish cleaning all the mud out of the pipes and pumps and boilers, you gotta oil and tighten up those safety valves,” Dallas said to Ring. “They’re squeaky, and they’re clattering. And I don’t know what’s wrong with the rods, but they’re wobbling. It’s got to be either the reach rod or the pendulum rod, but I can’t see a thing wrong with either of them.”

Ring’s tough face wrinkled. “Dallas, you know I don’t know no more’n a mule about an engine. Wish I did, but guess I’m just dirt-dumb. It’s just too bad that Hansen left us in the rub like this.” Willem Hansen, their engineer, had left to take a job on a bigger boat that paid twice as much as the Ashbys were paying him.

Dallas sighed. “Yeah, I know, Ring, but I can’t blame the man. And you’re not dumb, either. It just takes an engineer to know an engine. I’m no engineer either, or I’d know what’s wrong with the—” he hesitated, glancing at Carley squatting at his feet. “With the blamed thing,” he finished lamely.

Julienne came in then, holding her skirts closely around herself so as not to brush up against the greasy machinery. She walked up to Ring and Dallas and stared at the floor in front of them. A man’s booted feet were sticking out from underneath a maze of pipes. Carley squatted by the feet. Jesse was bent over, looking underneath the pipes. He bobbed up to touch his forehead to Julienne and then bent back over.

A muffled voice said, “What I want to know is how Hansen ever squeezed underneath here, the big ape. Carley, hand me that monkey wrench.”

Julienne’s mouth opened, and she blurted out, “Is that my brother?”

Ring and Dallas exchanged amused glances, and Dallas said, “Yes, ma’am.”

“You mean that’s my brother? Lying on the floor? What’s he doing lying on the floor?” she asked, astounded.

Though his voice was still muffled, he said loudly, “You know, I can hear you, Jules. I’m crazy, not deaf. I’m trying to open a valve down here so a bunch of stinking Mississippi mud can pour out onto my face.” Carley giggled.

Julienne just stood there gaping, so Dallas finally asked, “So, what are you doing down here, Julienne?”

“What? Oh. I was looking for Carley. Carley, what are you doing? Repairing a piston or something?”

“No, Dallas won’t let me fix anything yet,” she said with disgust. “I’m helping Darcy. Then we gotta oil the valves and reach for the rods.”

“That ain’t the right valve, Mr. Ashby,” Jesse said helpfully. “It’s that one just up above your right eye.”

“Yeah, that’s great, so all the muck’ll go right in my eye,” Darcy grumbled.

Julienne was so distracted by this strange phenomenon of her brother that she forgot Carley. Taking her arm, Dallas said, “C’mon, I’ve got to head out. I’ll walk you out.”

She allowed him to lead her out on deck, and he said soothingly, “You know, Carley’s going to be fine. She actually likes messing around down here, and she’s got a curious mind. She really pays attention to this stuff. And it’s a lot better for her to be occupied. Did you know Jesse caught her skipping down the gangplank yesterday by herself? She said she was going to go dig crawfish for catfish bait.”

“Oh, no,” Julienne groaned. “Whatever are we going to do? I guess we’ll just have to keep the landing stages up all the time.”

He gave her an odd look. “No, I don’t think so, Julienne. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“What? Why not?” she demanded.

“Because Carley is a child,” he said patiently. “And she’s an obedient child. She’s never failed to do one thing I’ve told her to do, and she’s never gotten fussy when I’ve forbidden her to do something she shouldn’t. I’m sorry to say it, but you and even your mother have let her run wild, and it’s only because of that lack of discipline that she does foolish things like thinking she can go wandering around Natchez-Under-the-Hill by herself.”

Julienne’s eyes narrowed with annoyance. “Just a minute, Dallas. Who do you think you are, telling me how to raise my sister, and criticizing my mother?”

“I don’t mean to,” Dallas said quietly. “It’s just that in the world you live in now, letting Carley run around on her own isn’t just an annoyance. It’s dangerous. And my crew cannot be responsible for watching her.”

“Who asked you to?” Julienne said angrily. “Carley’s just headstrong, and she will have her own way or bust. There’s nothing else to do.”

“Sure there is. Just talk to her, Julienne. She’s a smart little girl, and she understands a lot of things better than adults do. I think that if you just explained to her that things have changed, and she has to obey you and your mother and your aunt, and you tell her plain and simple what she can and can’t do, she would obey you.”

“Fine, Mr. Great-Kingpin-Pilot Know-It-All! I guess that’s how you cowed my poor brother into working!” she snapped. “By having a ‘plain and simple’ talk with him.”

“Pretty much,” Dallas said, shrugging.

“I doubt that, you probably threatened him, you big bully!”

Dallas said nothing.

He was right about Carley, and Julienne knew it, and deep down she had known it for a long time. But it stung, coming from a man who was unmarried, had no children, had never had brothers or sisters, and who shouldn’t know anything about it. She stormed, “You know what? I may need your help with this boat, but I don’t need you to tell me how to take care of my sister. Suppose you just leave that to me and my family!” With that she turned on her heel and stalked off.

Dallas watched her, frustrated, then he walked down the gangplank and up to the boardwalk.
Blasted women! One minute they’re all honey-sweet and the next they’re sinking their fangs into you! No wonder I never got married!

It was a long, fruitless, discouraging day for Dallas. They had returned from their round-trip haul to New Orleans five days previously, and though he went out looking every day, he still hadn’t found another load. All day he went back, again, to each warehouse manager, each shipping office, the harbormaster’s office, with no offers for loads for the
River Queen.
Then he went down to the docks, going from boat to boat, talking to everyone he knew to ask if they knew of an engineer that was available. No one could think of a single man. He went up again to the boardwalk and started asking at the flophouses, the brothels, the gambling dens, and the saloons, and couldn’t find a single engineer in all the river men holed up in Natchez-Under-the-Hill.

Finally he stood just past the foot of Silver Street. On his right was the
River Queen
.
On his left was the Blue Moon Saloon. He stood there for a long time, scowling down at the filthy, splintered boardwalk. Then he wheeled and stalked into the Blue Moon.

Walking over to the bar, he cocked his foot up on the brass footrail and plunked down a half dollar. “I’ll have a whiskey, Otto.”

“Sure, Dallas.” The bartender, a fat man with a handlebar mustache, poured him up a shot glass full of the brown liquid and asked, “No business for the
Queen
yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, if I hear of anything, I’ll be sure and send ’em to you. I know you need to put the
Queen
to work.”

“I’d appreciate that, Otto. And now I’ve lost my engineer. I’ve been searching this town and can’t find a man anywhere.”

Otto stood polishing a glass with a dingy towel, nodding. Half of his job was pouring whiskey, and the other half was listening. “Can’t think of any right now, but I’ll keep my ear to the ground. Never know, one might just walk in here and ask you for a job tonight.”

Dallas stood propped up against the bar for some time. Men came in, the girls woke up and started coming in from the back room, scratching and yawning. By nightfall the place was packed, the air was blue with smoke that almost choked a man to breathe it. Two poker games were going on, and there was a roulette wheel and a blackjack dealer, but he had no inclination to gamble. He ordered more drinks, and Otto doubled up on them at no charge. Eventually he realized that the noise was growing muffled, as if he had rolled cotton in his ears. Idly he picked up a nickel on the bar and spun it on its end. At least, he tried to do it, but his fingers felt like fat sticks
.
The coin fell on its side and he noticed idly that he saw two coins.
“I’m getting drunk. That’s what I’m doing. What do you think about that, Miss Julienne Snippy-Snoot Ashby?”

He downed the last of his drink and dizzily waved to Otto for another. As Otto poured it, he heard a man say, “Are you Dallas Bronte?”

Dallas turned and saw a tall young man about his height. He was young, no more than twenty-one or twenty-two, Dallas guessed, lanky and boyish-looking, but wiry, the kind that had more strength than one might suspect. He was plain, not handsome at all, but he had a pair of quick, alert, brown eyes and a broad smile. Dallas said, “Thass me. Dallas Bronte.”

“My name’s Revelation Brown, Mr. Bronte. I hear you’re the pilot of the
River Queen
?”

But Dallas had gotten stuck on his name. “You tell me that? What kind of a mama would name her baby ‘Revelation’?”

“She loved the Lord, and she loved that book. Revelation, you know.”

“Huh. Must be hard to get along with a name like that.”

“Not bad. People just call me Rev, usually. Mr. Bronte, are you born of the Spirit?”

The bluntness of the question and the cheerful face of the young man struck at Dallas. “No, I don’t think so. This is no place to be talking about things like that.”

“Why, of course it is! Any place is good to share the gospel. Matter of fact, that’s what I do everywhere I go.”

“It could get you thrown out of a place like the Blue Moon.”

“I’ve been thrown out of saloons before,” he said cheerfully. “But what I wanted to talk to you about was, I heard around that you’ve lost your engineer.”

Dallas’s brain cleared a little and he answered, “Yes, I did. Have you worked on boats?”

“Yes, sir, I ran the engines of the
Mandley H. Chapman
.”

“She was a good old boat. Yeah, I heard she got docked a coupla months ago. But you look kinda young for an engineer.”

“I left home when I was just fifteen. I got a job as cabin boy on the old
Tennessee Birdsong,
my first boat. Wasn’t long before I found out I have a knack with engines, and I’ve been working on them ever since. The
Chapman
was my first tour as an engineer, and I did pretty good, if I say so myself.”

Dallas nodded, “She was an old girl, you must have been good to keep her running for the last couple of years.” He looked Rev up and down, squinting his eyes to narrow it down to just one man he was seeing instead of three. “I need a man all right, but the trouble is, Brown, I can’t pay much. Probably nowhere near what you were making on the
Chapman
.
”

“That’s all right. All I need is a place to sleep, a little grub, an engine to work on, and a nickel or two for an ice cream every once in awhile. I love ice cream.”

Dallas studied him and saw a sincerity in him that impressed him. Dallas may be a dead loss at a poker face, but he could tell a liar across a crowded room. “All right then, Brown, let’s have a drink and we’ll talk.” He motioned to Otto.

“Call me Rev,” the young man said.

The bartender hurried up and asked, “What’ll it be, gents?”

“Another whiskey for me. ’Fraid they don’t have ice cream here at this fine establishment, Rev, so what you drinking?”

“I’ll have a sarsaparilla. Bartender, are you saved?”

Otto blinked his eyes. “No. I’m a bartender.”

“Well, bartenders need God too, don’t they?”

Otto grinned good-naturedly. “Does he talk like this all the time, Dallas?”

“It’s starting to look like it. Get the man a sarsaparilla.”

“Sure.”

When the drinks came, Rev sipped his and said, “So tell me about the
Queen
, Mr. Bronte.”

“If you can stand being called Revelation, I can take being called Dallas.” He went on to tell Rev about how the
Queen
had been laid up for three years, and how they had very little money to get her on the river again. He told him about the one haul they’d had. Then he told him about the problems he’d noticed with the engines.

Rev listened carefully, nodding from time to time. “Dallas, I know you don’t know me, but I’m telling you I know without even having to look what the problem is, and it’s an easy fix, which means cheap. Give me a chance. I’ll show you what I can do. After I pray over those boilers and that engine, your
River Queen
will run better than she ever has.”

Dallas stared at the young man and found himself smiling. “You read the Bible a lot, Rev?”

“All the time. Do you?”

“I used to.”

“Why’d you give it up?”

Dallas twirled the glass in his fingers, drank the last few drops and said, “It made me feel bad. I knew all that stuff about sinners would just aim right at me.”