Houseboat Girl (8 page)

“This crazy old river!” he scolded. “A sand bar in the middle, right in the channel! How can a fellow keep from hitting it?” He came up to the porch in his johnboat. “It’s the cabin boat that’s stuck, not the houseboat.”

The mishap meant a long delay, but Daddy knew just what to do. He took the outboard johnboat and pulled the houseboat down to a towhead, leaving Patsy and the little ones alone on board. Then he brought Mama and Milly back to help him get the cabin boat off the sand.

“You’ll have to wade out and push,” Daddy said.

“Wade and push?” gasped Mama.

Much as she loved the river, Mama’s love was purely an external one. She could not swim and she never ventured into the river if she could help it. To her, wading in the river was a terrible thing. Now, faced with the necessity of putting her feet in it, she was so scared she began to shake all over. But Milly had taken off her shoes and plunged in, so Mama had to do the same. First Daddy tried pushing with the oars, using main strength. But the sand was “crawly” and worked right out from under the paddle.

“Law me, I can see all the fish in the river!” Mama spoke in a low voice so Milly would not hear.

“Mama and I will push,” Milly told Daddy. “When you start the motor to back it up, we’ll both push.”

Mama waded over. “But Daddy will run over us!” she cried.

“Don’t be silly, Mama,” said Milly. “He’s going to
back,
I said.”

The motor roared as Mama pushed and Milly pushed. But the boat, a heavy one twenty-seven feet long and ten feet wide, did not budge. After repeated trials it was still in the same place.

At the stern of the boat were two heavy barrels of gasoline. Daddy decided to move these to the bow. He also filled an empty fish tub with water. With this additional weight on the bow, he hoped to raise the stern and get the rudder off the sand. After this they tried again. He started the motor and with more pushing, the cabin boat finally slid back off the sand bar into deeper water.

“You wait here now, Mama,” said Milly, “till I bring the johnboat.”

Mama stood in the middle of the river with water all around her, petrified with fear. While she was waiting for the johnboat to come, she happened to look down. To her great surprise, she saw that the water was not even ankle deep! And when she returned to the houseboat, the bottom of her dress was not even wet.

Safely back in her cozy kitchen again, Mama laughed and laughed. “I thought I was drowned for sure,” she said. “I could just feel all those fishes nibbling at my toes!”

Up spoke Dan. “I bet you wished Stub Henderson would come and pull you out the way he did Patsy!”

“Stub? Patsy?” cried Mama, surprised. “When did Stub pull Pasty out? Did Patsy fall in and nobody tell me?”

Milly and Patsy glared at Dan. Patsy grabbed his arm and started to shake him. But the secret was out.

“Oh, gosh!” said Dan. “I wasn’t supposed to tell. I forgot!”

“Oh well,” said Patsy. “She’s got to know some time.”

So the whole story came out—Patsy’s tumble in the creek, which led to her swimming lesson from old cranky Stub.

“Why didn’t Stub tell me?” asked Mama.

“I made him promise not to,” said Patsy.

“Well, since it’s all over,” said Mama, “I’m glad you can swim and won’t have to be pulled out again.”

Patsy put her arm around her mother’s waist, looked up at her and said, “Want me to teach you how to swim, Mama?”

“NO!” cried Mama. “There are too many fish in the river!”

The children laughed.

The Fosters did not start on until the next day, and then they did not get far. The wind kept blowing the boat up river and was so strong that Daddy decided to lay over. He tied up in the chute nearby out of the wind because the boat was too hard to handle. That afternoon there was a storm. It rained hard and kept them all indoors.

After the storm, Milly and Patsy went exploring in the johnboat. They had not gone far before they saw a lamplighter’s boat tied near a bank that had caved in. The tripod of the river light had fallen down and the lamplighter was hanging the lamp on a tree. When he came back to his boat, he called, to the girls.

“You girls from the shantyboat over there?”

“Yes, we are,” said Milly.

“Are you in trouble?” the man asked. “Can I tow you anywhere?”

“We’re O. K. now. You are a day late.” Milly told him about getting stuck on the sand bar and he laughed.

“Where you folks goin’?” asked the lamplighter.

“Oh, just down river,” said Milly. “We stop wherever Daddy takes a notion to stop.”

“Real river people, eh?” asked the man.

“Sure!” said Milly. “My sister here was born in the middle of the Mississippi River.”

“Oh Milly!” cried Patsy. “Don’t tell everybody that.”

The man laughed.

“Ever since the days of the flatboats, there have been all kinds of people goin’ down river, huntin’ adventure,” said the lamplighter. “Nowadays some of them get more than they bargained for. Most every day I meet up with them and try to help ’em if I can. They come sailin’ down in any old kind of craft—in a rubber canoe or a million dollar yacht or a big shantyboat outfit like yours. You’re lucky if your Daddy knows what he’s doin’.”

“He’s a real river man,” said Milly with dignity.

“He’s lived on the river all his life,” added Patsy.

“O. K. then,” said the lamplighter, waving his hand as he started off. “Have a good trip.”

When the girls got back to the houseboat, they told Mama and Daddy about the lamplighter.

“That couldn’t have been Seth Barker, could it?” asked Mama.

“No,” said Daddy. “He’s not as far north as this. His run is down along Arkansas.”

“Wonder if we’ll see Seth and Edie this trip,” said Mama.

“I doubt it,” said Daddy. “They never stay in one place very long.”

“They’re as bad as you, Abe,” said Mama.

“Well,” said Daddy, laughing. “The river keeps moving, why shouldn’t I?”

Patsy studied the river map each day. Each new page was tacked to the wall and showed a new stretch of the river. All lights and buoys were clearly marked.

“If I could only teach Daddy to read…” said Patsy.

“What’s the good of a map?” asked Daddy. “The channel has changed a dozen times since it’s been printed.”

“Well, it’s fun to look at, anyhow,” said Patsy.

What’s the next town we’re coming to?” asked Bunny. Town meant candy to Bunny, so she could not get there too soon.

“Hickman, Kentucky,” said Patsy. “I’ll watch all the lights and tell you when we are getting near. 939—that’s Williams light, and 937.3 is Samuel light. Hickman is right by Island No. 6.”

The day wore slowly on. There were long stretches of revetments first on the Missouri, then on the Kentucky side. Revetments were banks paved with asphalt to prevent erosion, where the current raced swiftly by. They made progress difficult, because there was always danger that the houseboat might be smashed against them.

Sometime later, Patsy looked up from the mail-order catalogue and saw a light. “927.5—that’s Henderson light. Why, we never stopped at Hickman at all! We’re past it!”

“We’re past Hickman?” cried Milly in dismay. She slumped in a chair and began to grumble. “I wanted to go to the post office for my package.”

“It’s too late now,” said Mama. “Coming down river it’s hard to get in and out of Hickman Bend, but we should have seen the town. It’s a pretty place, high up on a hill, and there’s a ferry, too. Looks like Daddy’s aimin’ to make New Madrid tonight.”

“Why, that’s way over on the next page,” said Patsy, looking at the map book. “We’ll go by a big island first, No. 8. That’s still in Kentucky, but pretty soon we’ll get to Tennessee.” She turned the page.

Below Island No. 8, there were great sand bars for miles along the river and stretching inland, dotted with snags and fallen trees from previous floods. Tall grasses and willows grew on the higher parts. There were many birds—kingfishers, sea gulls, killdees and a few pelicans.

Mama came over to look at the map, and Patsy started explaining.

“When we get to the Kentucky-Tennessee line, there’s a big loop in the river. New Madrid’s up at the top in Missouri. The loop is in Kentucky.”

“That’s New Madrid Bend,” said Mama. “Daddy says you can walk across that neck of land in thirty minutes, but it takes half a day to go around in a boat. The neck is only a mile wide, but it’s nineteen miles around the loop, almost a circle.”

“Too bad we can’t carry the houseboat over,” said Dan.

“Then we wouldn’t get to stop at New Madrid,” said Patsy.

Now they were traveling northeast, as if heading for Illinois again. It was a long hard pull to New Madrid and Mama thought they’d never make it. The wind was against them all the time, blowing them the other way, so it took twice as much gas to push the boat. Late in the day they came in sight of New Madrid and Daddy made the houseboat fast to some piling near the landing.

“I’m about out of food,” said Mama. “I’ll have to lay in a supply for two or three days. If we should get laid up in a storm, we’d have to eat.”

“I’ll have to fill up with gas, too,” said Daddy.

“I want to go to the post office,” said Milly.

“We want candy,” said Dan and Bunny.

Patsy thought for a minute. “And I’d like a great big bunch of bananas,” she said.

They all laughed.

“N
ONE OF YOU CAN GO
,” said Mama the next morning.

The children began to wail, but it did no good.

“I’ll get the ice and my groceries as quick as I can,” said Mama, “and Daddy will ask the man at the fish market to call a gas truck.”

“As soon as I fill up with gas,” said Daddy, “we’ll start down river. This is a bad place here, tied up to this piling.”

“Can we go in swimming?” asked Patsy.

“No,” said Daddy. “There’s quicksand here—it’s too dangerous.”

“Oh heck!” said Patsy in disgust. “After I learn to swim, I never get a chance to go in the water.”

Off went Daddy and Mama in the johnboat to the town of New Madrid, pronounced New Mad´-rid. Patsy and Bunny were still in pajamas. They tumbled back into bed again. The houseboat always seemed empty with Mama gone.

“Anybody who wants any breakfast better come and get it,” called Milly from the kitchen.

“I’m not hungry,” said Patsy.

“Neither am I,” said Bunny.

But they came out and ate just the same. Milly pulled Dan out of his cot and dragged him by one leg to the kitchen. Half asleep, Dan tried to eat, then ran back to bed. He took Tom, the cat, under the covers with him.

“You kids better get your clothes on,” scolded Milly.

“Stop your bossing,” said Patsy.

“Well, I’m boss when Mama’s gone,” said Milly.

“You’re not gonna boss me any more,” said Patsy. “From now on, I’m my own boss.”

“Ha! Ha! That’s what
you
think!” Milly laughed as she started to wash the breakfast dishes.

Patsy put on her clothes and went out on deck. She sat on the couch and put her arm around Blackie’s neck. “Here comes a towboat!” she called. Bunny and Dan came running.

“A towboat!” Milly dropped the dishcloth and came out, too.