The River Queen (2 page)

Since then I have been on an assortment of medications. Zoloft to make me happy, Ativan to calm me down. Ambien to make me sleep. I'm trying to wake up, but the cocktail is taking its toll. I'm groggy. I'm also desperate to pee into something that is not a jelly jar and have a cup of coffee, none of which seem imminent.

I ease my way out of my nook into a pair of flip-flops and my Uncle Sidney's hospital robe from thirty years ago, which for some reason I have brought along, and pull aside the lime green curtain that separates me from the galley and the helm. Jerry greets me with a double shot of mocha from a machine in town and a copy of
USA Today.

“Thanks,” I say.

He mentions that Tom's girlfriend, Kim, has “aborted the mission.” The night before I had dinner with Kim as she made her case for going down the river with us. She ambushed me over sauteed trout, telling me she'd worked hard on the boat and wanted to come with us. When I said no, there wasn't really room, she asked if she could just sail with us for a day or two. I couldn't say no to that.

“I got a note from her,” he explains. “She's not coming with.”

“Really?” I could still see Kim, a blue-eyed woman with a mane of auburn hair, talking nonstop about her five children and the farm they all live on. Kim told me, “I've got pigs, cows, and lambs. I raise them by hand. I cuddle and give them names. They come when I call. When it's time to harvest, I take out my .44 and shoot them right between the eyes.”

“Maybe it's for the best,” I reply.

Jerry shrugs. “Kim's a good woman. She worked hard to get this boat into the water.” He pauses, “But, as they say in Norwegian, less to worry about.”

I glance at the headlines of
USA Today.
It is September 12, 2005, just two weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. “Some Say Congress Is Going Too Far on Aid; Officials: Rush May Encourage Waste, Fraud.” And “Disaster Stays on New Yorkers' Minds.” An image of people sleeping on cots in the Astrodome catches my eye. This journey was to take me to New Orleans. But nothing is certain now.

Clutching my towel and cosmetic bag, I clasp my robe around me. “I think I'll get a shower.”

“Oh, take your time,” Jerry says, and I have a feeling he means it.

*   *   *

The boathouse up the hill is a kind of warehouse filled with machines, pumps, a message board, assorted boating manuals, sporting-life magazines, a refrigerator, showers, and a toilet. In the shower I put the water on full blast. I slip out of my Uncle Sidney's robe, though I am careful to keep my flip-flops on (athlete's foot, my daughter swears, loves communal showers). Hot water spills over my body.

As I walk out, towel-drying my hair, I find Tom with a large metal object that resembles a horse's stomach in a vise. He's poking a finger through a rusty hole. “I've gotta fix this manifold before we can sail,” he says.

“Yes.” I'm standing on the concrete floor in my bathrobe, looking at his grease-stained finger. “I can see the problem.”

“Well, you know, Mary, you sleep right next to the engines.” He looks at me with his dark, serious eyes. “I don't want you to die of exhaustion.”

It takes me a moment. “Right, thanks. I wouldn't want to either.” Tom turns back to the manifold with his soldering iron. Carly Simon is singing the words “Don't go away” on his boom box. On the wall there's a poster of half a dozen golden retriever puppies and a sign that reads
IF THIS IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF MY LIFE, THEN I'M IN REAL TROUBLE
.

In the parking lot I walk by a pickup truck. A little black dog with beady eyes and wiry hair sits in the driver's seat. It looks just like Toto. When I go up to say hello, the dog goes nuts, barking, flipping in the seat, baring its teeth, ready to rip my throat out. “Jesus,” I say, backing away.

“Hey!” Tom shouts as he comes out of the boathouse. “Samantha Jean, cut that out!”

“That's Samantha Jean?” I recognize the name of Tom's houseboat, and I know it's named after the dog who will be traveling with us.

“Yeah,” Tom says. “She's a little territorial about the car.” He goes over and bends his face toward the rat terrier. “Aw, she'll get used to you after a while. Just don't go near her or try and pet her or anything like that until she comes to you. Sammy, you be a good girl now. That's right. Gimme five.”

And the dog slaps his hand with her paw.

As I head back down to the boat, I ponder why I am doing this. I have a nice house, a loving husband, a dog that doesn't want to kill me. Surely I could have stayed home. But for whatever reason, this river has gotten under my skin. Shuffling through a shaded picnic area, I pass two old guys, one pudgy, one thin, pouring their morning coffee from a thermos. I smell the rich, dark liquid steaming in their plastic mugs.

I'm sniffing the air and trying to sneak by when one of the men—moon-faced with glasses—says, “So you going downriver with those fellows?”

“Yes, I am,” I say. He takes a big sip of coffee. If he offered me some, I wouldn't say no. But he doesn't.

“And that dog?”

“That's right.”

He raises his mug at me. “Well, I wish you luck.” He goes back to looking out at the river. “I used to keep a boat and a slip here.”

I sit down at a table a few feet from theirs. “You don't take her out anymore?”

He shakes his head. “My wife's got Alzheimer's. She'll tell you the day of the week when our daughter was born, but she can't remember if she left the gas on. Can't leave her alone anymore.” His eyes gaze down the bank and settle on our boat. A pair of swans with their cygnets swim by. “I'm gonna sell mine soon.”

“You ever been downstream?” I ask them.

“Oh, yeah,” the thin man says. “But I like it up here between Wabasha and Dubuque.”

“Naw, I like it further south,” his friend chimes in. “From Davenport to Alton. There's more to see.”

“It's God's Country where we are,” the other replies. “Hey, that big guy, Tom, he used to work on boats before, didn't he?”

“Before what?” I ask.

“I don't know. I think something happened.…”

“What happened?” I ask.

He waves it off with his hand. “Oh, if he's going downriver with Jerry, I'm sure he's a good guy.”

“Yeah,” the thin man nods as if he's trying to convince himself. Suddenly Tom emerges from the boathouse, holding up the manifold in a clenched fist like a barbarian with his spoils. He shouts down to the boat to Jerry, “I think she'll hold for now!”

“For now?” I ask, “What does that mean?”

Tom looks at me through disgruntled eyes. “For as long as she holds.”

This seems to satisfy Jerry, who begins transporting the food he's been keeping in the marina workshop fridge onto the boat and into the cooler on the deck. Eggs, orange juice, the largest loaf of Wonder Bread I've ever seen. Milk, a two-pound slab of Wisconsin cheddar. A family-size package of Chips Ahoy, which Tom stows above the fridge and devours by the fistful. There's also two loaves of chocolate bread and a huge tin of molasses cookies.

One of the cronies turns to me and says, “I've never seen so much food going into Jerry's boat. Lotsa beer. But never that much food.”

Jerry carts cases of diet Mountain Dew, diet Coke, and La Crosse beer in a wheelbarrow, and I follow in my flip-flops and robe. “Beer's for ballast,” Jerry quips as he dumps a case into the cooler and smothers it with ice.

My husband, Larry, suggested running a background check on these guys, but I resisted. I was seeing myself as Katharine Hepburn in the
African Queen,
but Larry was thinking Natalie Wood. Traveling with two river pilots named Tom and Jerry seemed like a safe bet to me. I envisioned a cartoon cat chasing around a savvy mouse. Now I'm not so sure.

I've read stories of pilots who, for one reason or another, needed to lighten their loads. Before the river was managed and dredged, ships often ran aground. About a hundred years ago in the late fall when the river runs low, a packet ship filled with German immigrants got wedged onto a sandbar. In order to get off, the packet boat unloaded the sixty or so immigrants and their families. They unloaded their luggage. Then, as the boat floated off the sandbar, the crew left them in the middle of winter on Island 65 with minimum provisions, never to be heard from again.

The river is filled with hundreds of nameless islands and secluded backwaters, those dark spaces on the navigational maps only experienced river pilots know. Ideal for depositing human remains. If I complain about the coffee or if I don't want to swab the deck, what's to stop them? The eagles would pick me down to the bones. The truth is, I don't know these guys from Adam. I'm going on instinct and, as my husband is quick to point out, I've been wrong before.

3

I
T WAS
at my nephew Matt's wedding two years ago that the idea of going down the river got into my head. Matt, a nationally ranked wrestler with a cauliflower ear and a bone-crunching grip, was marrying a lovely girl named Gail, a black belt in karate, who could “kill him” with swords, as Matt likes to brag. The wedding was being held in La Crosse on the banks of the Mississippi.

The ceremony looked like a convention for bouncers. Matt's wrestling team served as ushers, and they ate all the shrimp, then went to work on the mushroom caps. It was raining and gray, but as the strains of the wedding march were heard, the sun came out and the river glittered like gold—“a miracle,” the guests would later recall. After the reception the wrestlers built a bonfire and we sang “This Land Is Your Land” and “Little Boxes,” accompanied by an acoustic guitar and a set of bongos, as the river, dark, mysterious, and beckoning, churned by.

The next day Larry and I went for a walk. It was a clear and crisp May afternoon and we needed to decompress from so much family time. As we strolled along the river, I spotted a houseboat. It was small and white with neat blue trim, shutters, an upper deck, white curtains in the windows—just sitting there, as if expecting company. I liked its name.
Reckless Abandon.
“Let's have a look,” I said, and we wandered over.

It was a small vessel, but it had a sweet galley, a nice roof deck, and some cramped sleeping quarters. Gazing through a window, we could see that the whole inside wasn't much bigger than a kitchen in a Manhattan studio apartment. I walked around to the back where a man with a grizzled face sat with a fishing line in one hand, a cigarette in the other. “Is this your houseboat?” I asked.

“Yes it is.”

He flung his cigarette into the water and introduced himself as “Smokey” [
sic
]. “That's cuz I smoke so much, but I'm gonna quit.”

“Can we see it?”

“Sure,” Smokey said. And he took us inside.

I'd never been inside a houseboat before, but this was cozy. I liked the curtains, the windows, the open feel. “The nice thing about the Mississippi,” Smokey told us, “is that you can moor up wherever you go. If the weather gets rough, you can tie up to an island. You know, like Huck Finn, you can just go wherever you want to go.”

As I looked out across the river, I tried to imagine what it would be like—going down the river in a houseboat like this one. Or maybe even this one. “Don't let this river fool you,” Smokey went on. “She can be a bitch.”

“How far can this boat go?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I don't know. As far as she wants, I guess.”

“Could she go to Dubuque?”

He gazed down the river.

“I don't know why not.” Smokey shrugged. “Never been there.”

“Well, what about Hannibal?”

Smokey considered this as he lit another cigarette, which he gripped in his yellowed hands, then puffed between his yellowed teeth. “Never been there either.”

“Well, do you ever rent your boat to anyone? Would you ever think of that?”

Smokey smiled through stained and ragged teeth. “Don't know why not, if the price is right.”

While Larry stared at me, dumbfounded, I handed Smokey a slip of paper and he wrote down three or four phone numbers: where he worked, where he tended to sleep, where he was supposed to live, and who might know where to find him.

As we walked back to the hotel, Larry said to me, “You aren't seriously thinking about traveling with that guy?”

I shrugged. “I don't know,” I said. And under my breath, “Maybe I am.”

Six months later I started calling Smokey. For a while, as I planned this journey, I had my heart set on renting his boat. I talked to him a few times. First he had an accident on his Harley and was out of commission. Then he left the ammo plant where he worked the graveyard shift. After that I kept calling and calling the numbers he gave me, but, much to my husband's relief, I never reached him again.

*   *   *

When I made my decision to do this trip, I asked Matt to put up signs at the local marinas:
WRITER SEEKS RIVER PILOT WITH HOUSEBOAT TO GO DOWNSTREAM
. No one answered my ad. So I flew to La Crosse and Matt and I hung out at the Pettibone Marina on a sweltering July afternoon long enough for the harbormaster to tell us to go talk to Tom Hafner. Tom, he said, lives on a houseboat called the
Samantha Jean
on the other side of French Island. “I don't have his number,” the harbormaster said, “but just go over there.”

As we drove on to French Island toward Tom's place, Matt pointed to a derelict house where a man kept his dead mother in the freezer for four years. “It wasn't murder,” Matt assured me. “He just wanted to collect her Social Security.” We both gazed at the ramshackle house with its weedy front yard and collapsed Venetian blinds.

“I guess nobody wants to live there now. But otherwise,” he said, with a sigh that did not inspire confidence, “La Crosse is safe. Just don't go to La Plume Island at night. That's where the bodies tend to wash up. It's not that people are murdered at the marinas, but for some reason, maybe it's the current, they wash up there.”