The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen (11 page)

“Grasshoppering comes to mind,” said Elijah vaguely, and Chad Powers was up there beside him in an instant, paper and pencil at the ready.

“There's yer legs,” Elijah said, scowling in the direction of the yellow staves of wood. But then the concept of grasshoppering—the whole reason for talking about it—sprang out of Elijah's brain, like a grasshopper through an open window. The men yelled at Elijah to try and remember. The women took a more practical approach.

“Why's it called grasshoppering, d'you suppose?” asked Loucien. “Must be a reason.”

“Maybe if we clap our hands, it'll jump clear outa the crick!” suggested Tibbie. Miss May March gave a slightly hysterical laugh.

Chad Powers scribbled in his sketchbook, as he was inclined to do at times of stress. “Anyone remind me how a grasshopper hinges?” he asked.

Now, in the glory days before school set in, Kookie Warboys had raced grasshoppers as well as turtles and beetles. Snatching the pencil, he drew a torpedo shape with legs like a spider.

“Carrots 'n' pears, that's not it at all!” said Cissy (who had once lost all her buttons to Kookie by betting on a rheumatic grasshopper). She took the pencil and corrected the legs.

“Then I reckon . . .” Chad Powers took back his sketchbook and began to draw, tongue protruding from one side of his mouth. His diagram looked like yet another plan for a prairie sailboat, but when it was finished, they could see it was a paddleboat with spindly grasshopper legs planted on either side of its thorax. “Block and tackle at the apex, right?” he said, thrusting the drawing under Elijah's nose.

“Yep,” said the old man, as if the knowledge had been there all along and he had just wanted them to work it out for themselves.

The idea was to form a hoist from the staves of yellow oak and, by rope and pulley, to lift the
Queen
's breastbone just clear enough of the gravel and pry her a few yards forward. A few yards were all it would take to break free. Elijah watched from the roof of the pilothouse, chewing on his beard, too old to lend any muscle power and haunted by half-remembered glimpses of other groundings: ancestral grasshoppers. He looked like an oracle divining smoky visions of coming disasters. “You put them legs in the river without shoes on, and they'll let you down,” he moaned to himself.

They had no idea what he meant, but they soon found out. As they hauled on the ropes—”Lou, you lay off pulling, or by God I'll divorce you!”—the A-frame of yellow wood simply sank down, down, and down into the sand and grit of the creek bed.

They scoured the boat for the “shoes” Elijah was talking about, but nothing suggested itself. Had he just known it, Curly had held them in his own two hands back at Salvation, but nothing called to mind the two “Norman helmets” he had come across, puzzled over, and stowed in the property box for some future play with knights and jousting.

The mosquitoes gathered in clouds around their heads. Frogs onshore passed rude remarks about their seamanship. Tibbie began to cry again.

“Powinniśmy śpiewać!”
said Max cheerfully, and launched into a Polish folk song about a shipwreck.

“Reckon we're up Sheep Creek without a paddle,” said Tibbie, which was something she had heard her father say.

Everett kept looking down at the watch Loucien had given him on their wedding day. Curly saw it and remarked, in an undertone, “
Our minutes hasten to their end.”

“Quite,” said Everett. “Time to abandon ship. They could be here any minute. Onshore, at least we can split up and hide in the greenery.”

“They'll burn the
Queen
if they find her,” said Curly, casting a glance over the dilapidated wreck he had come to think of as home.

“With or without us on board, Curly, and I know which I'd prefer.”

The Dog Woman waded ashore with all her mutts floating in a wooden tub. Medora wrapped up her precious equipment, and Chad Powers carried it on his head to the shore, returning to carry Medora ashore with the same infinite care. He prized her technological genius as highly as her mirrored skirt and waist-length hair. Everett had just picked up his wife in both arms, and sat down on the edge of the deck ready to slide into the water, when Elder Slater emerged from his cabin two decks up.

“Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be!”
bellowed Slater, advancing down the passenger deck brandishing his pawnshop poacher snares. And lowering himself into the river like John the Baptist, he drew an immense breath and disappeared below water.

Thanks to the regular shouting he did in the name of the Lord, he had a huge lung capacity and did not surface again until he had positioned the spiky metal traps, jaws open, on the riverbed. He could have stayed under for longer if he had not been reciting a psalm throughout, for fear the trap jaws might spring shut on him and rip off both his arms.

The yellow oak pilings were heaved to and fro till they could be pulled out of the soft riverbed. Now the base of each beam was lowered into the jaw of an open metal trap. The traps shut with a noise clearly audible through the water and made everybody jump. And this time, when the Bright Lights Theater Company joined forces and pulled on the ropes, the A-frame sank its iron-shod feet no more than a few inches into the riverbed before standing solid—a triumphal wooden arch capable of lifting the poor old
Queen
's heart when nothing else could.

With a noise like an explosion, one of the yellow beams splintered and broke. The grasshopper rig collapsed. A rope was lost. Medora and the Dog Woman were left behind on the towpath, but the
Sunshine Queen
was moving—was out on the river once more! Their hair full of wet willow leaves, their clothes soaked, their hands rope burned, the salvagers clung to the rails and marveled at their own achievement.

“Who'da thought a bunch of lightweights like us could lift a ton of engine!” panted Loucien, resting on her knees, one hand supporting the great weight of the baby inside her.

“Touch the mountains, and they shall smoke!”
declaimed Hellfire Slater, beaming so broadly that they caught a first glimpse of his tombstone teeth.

“Loucien Shades Crew, will you kindly lie down and rest before I rope and hogtie you?” roared her husband, scarlet with annoyance and with straining on the ropes. “And can we please get those ladies back on board before the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse come back, guns blazing?”

If they did pass the vengeful posse of gamblers farther downstream, they did not see each other. A foggy dusk draped a gray tarpaulin over the
Sunshine Queen
; her passengers lit no lights, made no sound, until they were sure they had burrowed deep into moonless night. Soon afterward, the
Queen
rammed the bank and turned clear around before nestling to a halt in an eroded hollow. Chips came and explained that Elijah had fallen asleep on his roof. “I seed him doze off,” said Chips, still swinging his tool bag forward and back.

They were ashamed to have forgotten the old man perched on the Texas, steering the vessel with his brand-new boots. They felt bad about letting Elijah exhaust himself, when he had, after all, saved the day. So they all climbed to the bridge and put Elijah to bed. He barely woke as they lowered him through the roof hatch and tucked him in on the mattress taken down from the deckhouse wall. Beside his head, Cissy set down a plate of breakfast.

Or lunch if he overslept.

“I make good picture from beside river,” said Medora at dinnertime, waving a glass plate in its wooden slide. They took turns peering at the blurred gray image of the
Sunshine Queen
erupting through the willows, hinged legs to the fore, very much like a three-story grasshopper. The moment had been preserved forever. Each member of the company contemplated the wonders of photography and thought of someone they would like to show this picture to—friend, father, brother, wife—in days to come.

And one by one each succumbed to tears for fear that they would never again see that person—friend, father, brother, wife. Even Max thought of his runaway wife and shed tears because now he would never get the chance to show her the photo and see her think twice about breaking up the team.

Medora looked around her at the tears running down, folded the plate away in chamois leather, and ate her dinner.

Next day, Everett persuaded Elijah to start giving him (and Chad and Curly and Benet) lessons in how to steer the boat, so that in the future they could share the work.

Chapter Ten
Feverish Activity

I
t's hot here,” said Tibbie as they docked in Timberlake. Her pink cheeks and down-turned mouth made her look quarrelsome, as if Timberlake were not trying hard enough. Cissy said there was a nice smell of fresh paint. Tibs said it made her feel sick.

They stayed over in Timberlake to make much-needed repairs to the boat. Here was a town that prized the river. Every yard was home to a rowboat. There were fish traps in evidence, and eddies of stale bread in the river where local anglers were training the fish to gather. And there was a boatyard with jetties and pilings and boat cradles. In pride of place on its shoreline lay an elegant oak slipper launch. It was plain who owned it: it was called
Sheriff's Star
. There was even a ship's chandlery, selling marine paint, fenders, and the like. Not that they could afford any of these temptations. They confined themselves to patching the hole in the bottom of the hull with something better than a tree stump, getting the engine working, and giving Chips time to rebuild the paddle wheel.

It did not sound like much. Thanks to Elijah, the boiler and ducts were as clean as bagpipes. One broken piston rod, a leak in the compression chamber, some chain links that had seized as solid as an old lady's joints: how hard could it be? The local engineer they hired—a Scotsman—was so sparing with his speech that they feared he would charge by the word if they tried chatting with him, so they left him alone to bang around in the bowels of the boat with his wrench, wearing a miner's helmet with a candle in it. Elijah, who was territorial about the engine room, stood by with a bucket of water in case the candle set light to his boat.

Everett, meanwhile, went off in search of timber, taking Medora with him. In exchange for a portrait photo of him and his seven children, the boatyard owner pointed out a derelict rowboat half full of water, and said they could break it up for usable timber.

“Barter's a wonderful thing,” said Everett on his return. He told Chips the good news, and away went the carpenter, returning with useful amounts of excellent oak.

Though he generally moved with the slowness of a deep-sea diver in lead boots, give him some wood and a hammer and Chips was transformed. He climbed into the paddle wheel like a rat into a treadmill, and he fitted blades, mended struts, replaced spindles, and whopped on the paint with happy abandon. It was true that the wheel did not revolve afterward, but Chad Powers soon tracked down the problem—Chips had nailed it fast.

“Kept leaning over, kinda,” said Chips discon-tentedly.

Chad pried out the nails, and the wheel slumped sideways.

“Piddock,” said the Scots engineer, emerging from the engine room, the candle in his hat quivering with contempt.

“Only two-thirds of the blades hit the water,” said Chad.

“I think it's kinda jaunty,” said Loucien gamely, and linked arms with the carpenter. “At least it spins now. And two thirds of a wheel is better than no wheel at all.”

The rest of the oak went to mend the hole in the hull. It did not entirely keep out the river, which wormed its way in to examine Chip's carpentry from both sides. But moving around the engine room was a lot easier now that the tree trunk was gone. Elijah splashed tar over the leaks, while everyone else hauled the
Sunshine Queen
on ropes into place alongside the Timberlake landing stage, in readiness for the evening performance.

“Where did Chips get that oak?” Elijah asked, wiping tarry hands on a rag. He and Everett were sitting on the bull rail watching Hellfire Slater harangue the gathering audience. Crew was thinking, yet again, what an odd form of entertainment it was.

“There's a hulk in the boatyard. Man said we could help ourselves.”

“That oak's no junk,” said Elijah. “Perfect. Varnish perfect. Nice. Take a look.” So Everett and Elijah went down into the engine room. Before he got there, Everett was starting to know what he would find. Most damning of all were the words sticking out, in timber bas-relief, just below the expansion tube:
SHERIFF'S STAR
.

“
Good. Good,” Everett said, nodding and smiling and thinking back. He took a stroll along the bank, just to check that his worst fears were well founded.

The sunken derelict lay where it had, brimful of moonlight and river water, untouched. Pulled up on the slip lay the keel and ribs of a boat, like the rib cage of something vultures have stripped. Earlier in the day it had been an elegant, lovingly maintained slipper launch.

Chips had stripped the wrong boat.

Everett looked around him at the sleeping boatyard, turned up the collar of his jacket, and sauntered ever so casually back along the wharf to where Medora was showing moving pictures of timber logging in Canada.

“Early call tomorrow, folks,” he said softly, each time he passed one of the Bright Lights Theater Company. “I fear we may have abused our guests' hospitality.” He would have liked to make amends to the owner of the slipper launch, but the takings for the evening would not begin to cover it. With luck, the ghastly mistake would not be discovered until they were far, far away.

“Chips is a pribbling, swag-bellied skainsmate,” said Curly.

“He means well,” said Everett.

“He's a clay-brained scut.”

“He got the paddle wheel working. We can make a quickish getaway,” said Everett, but Curly only went on shaking his head in sorrow and cursing Chips in Tudor English.

Just as the fish started to rise and feast on the clouds of evening insects, the Bright Lights Showboat Company gave the good people of Timberlake
The Perils of Pirate Nancy,
and it was their best yet. Curly heartlessly sold his daughter into slavery. The dastardly pirate was all set to kill her until his pregnant lover talked him around. Then Nancy turned down his proposal flat as a skillet. Nancy walked the plank, and the audience yelped and gasped as she fell with a cry of
“I'm an American, you fiend!
”

Then somehow it all got even more exciting.

Chad lit a piece of Medora's magnesium ribbon, dropped it into a bottle—he had been aching to try it—and thrust it into Benet's grip. Benet, lit by its incandescent light, swung across the stage and made an elegant touchdown. But confronted by the villainous mustachioed pirate chief, he found he could not draw his sword, because of the flare bottle in his sword hand, so he threw it over the rail.

It narrowly missed Kookie and sank to the riverbed. But it went on burning even underwater—which is the way of magnesium. Then Loucien shot the villainous pirate chief: he should have fallen through the roof hatch, except that he remembered, in the nick of time, removing the mattress for Elijah to sleep on. So he died on the spot instead, and tried not to breathe too heavily (which is difficult after a strenuous sword fight).

“
Help! Quick! Get me out!
” yelled Kookie from down below, and the fear in his voice was very convincing: he seemed to be getting the knack of acting.

“There goes Kookie, milking it as usual,” said Cissy, as she hooked Tibbie into the red-white-and-blue dress in a cabin nearby.

“Mmm,” said Tibbie vaguely.

Concerned parties rushed to the side of the boat and, in accordance with the script, scoured the water for signs of life, though it was all too obvious that Nancy was still alive because she was hollering:

“
Alligator! Help! Get me out for the love of—
”

“Aw, now he's just bein' ridiculous,” said Cissy.

“That Habakkuk Warboys is
such
a fool,” said Miss March.

“Mmm,” said Tibbie.

From up top, Loucien, Benet, and Curly struck exaggerated poses of grief and woe, facing the bank as much as possible (because it is a rule of the theater that you don't turn your back on the audience). On the floor by their feet, the dead pirate chief growled with annoyance at Kookie messing with the script yet again.

“
Pleeeease!
” said Kookie, but this time very quietly. He was standing on the bottom, head and shoulders above water, arms lifted high over his head. But they could see the rest of him, thanks to the flare still burning away on the riverbed, lighting up an underwater world. The flare had drawn fishes from far and wide into its circle of light. They were clearly visible round about him, like demons conjured by black magic. One of the shadows was torpedo shaped and so long that its tail was still in darkness while its flat snout was nudging at Nancy's white frock. Kookie was no longer calling out, but his upturned face was a round, white circle beseeching someone—anyone—to believe him.

“Frimony,” said Boisenberry.

“Shotten herring,” said Curly.

“Holy Simon Cameron,” said Benet under his breath. “It's the genuine article. Boy's gonna get ate.”

But still no one moved, because no one knew what to do. Benet feared that, if he threw the rope, the splash would startle the creature into attacking.

“Do something, Everett!” whispered Loucien, and (confusingly for the audience) the dead pirate chief got to his feet and joined the anxious knot of people at the ship's rail.

Meanwhile, in the dressing room, Cissy looked up. Without knowing it, she had developed the habit of moving her lips in time with the actors'. Now she sensed a space that should not be there, sensed a change in the schedule. “Kookie's drowned,” she told Miss May, and rushed outside, lime-green dungarees or no lime-green dungarees.

In fact, the stage filled up with all manner of people who were not usually in the play. Two clowns, a Gypsy projectionist, three barbershop singers, a barber, an organist, and a woman clutching a dog to her chest.

It was Miss March who had the presence of mind to grab Moppet out of the Dog Woman's arms and throw it into the river: an alternative meal for the alligator.

“
You witch!
” screamed the Dog Woman, and launched a punch at Miss May. Then the commotion in the water drew them back, spellbound, to the rail.

Luckily, audiences do not give much thought to plot, and the people of Timberlake were so thrilled and bewildered that they stood up, shouting, gasping, pushing one another out of the way, holding their children up to see better or hugging them close in case the news was too upsetting for youngsters to hear.

Hand over hand, gingerly, Benet fed out the rope, which Kookie grabbed and clung to like a burr to a cat. When they pulled him up, it looked more like landing a tuna than rescuing a maiden in distress.

“Miss May, you're a wonder!” Kookie said as he came headfirst over the rail, got up, and hugged his schoolteacher. It left the audience thinking the lady with the bun must be some kind of fairy godmother, like in “Cinderella.” But they really did not care. Pirate Nancy had been saved from drowning and (if they had heard right) the jaws of an alligator! Mothers assured their children that the little doggie wasn't real . . . just a puppet. The children complained they hadn't been able to see the alligator eat the dog. But they all cheered and stamped and called the actors back seven times over to applaud them. Tibbie gave a particularly wavering recital of “America the Bounteous Land” that reduced grown men to tears.

There was a pause then, because the Dog Woman had shut herself in her cabin and would not come out. So Max and Cissy and Sweeting came on with the plank and soothed the audience with the gentle comedy of their routine, and the evening ended with Loucien singing “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton” to the accompaniment of banjos, a harmonica, and a swanee whistle. No sooner had the song finished than the showboat gave a rude belch and the calliope on its roof wheezed into life. Instead of “Lead, Kindly Light,” Miss March made a game attempt at “Polly Wolly Doodle.” It started slow but speeded up, as she found the right key, and was positively storming along by the time the kerosene ran out in her lamp and she could no longer see the keys.

The great thing about disasters is that they feel so good afterward.

Moppet swam ashore and found her own way aboard again, showing no sign of resenting the swim. The company checked her over for missing limbs, but the alligator was either vegetarian or had been hit between the eyes with Moppet, lost its appetite, and swum off. They tossed another flare into the river, intrigued now to catch a glimpse of the monster. Fish were drawn to the light like iron filings to a magnet, but there was no sign of the alligator.

“'Gator gar,” said Elijah, unimpressed by the whole spectacle.

“It was
this big
!” said Kookie for the fifteenth time.

“We saw it!” Cissy backed him up.

“Yup. They come up real big, garfish,” Elijah conceded. “Take ducks. Water rats. Swans even. Seen 'em.”

Kookie, who had seen the snout, seen the dark shape heading his way, felt the nudge against his hip, would have stood up in a court of law and sworn to it being an alligator. Years later, he was still describing the encounter, and by then the beast had grown to the size of Rhode Island. Everyone else was rather relieved to think the Numchuck River held nothing more deadly than giant garfish.

Curly was particularly happy. “If it means he won't fling himself in the water every opportunity God sends, I don't care if it was a shark,” he said as he wrung out the white smock and knocked the bonnet back into shape. “That fish just halved the laundry.”

The great thing about disasters is that afterward it feels as if all the bad times have gone for good.

But they had not. Not if the Dog Woman had her way.

She could not forgive Moppet's plunge into the jaws of death—or even a big garfish. Packing Binky, Topper, and Moppet into their basket, she quit the
Sunshine Queen
next morning, elbows out, twitching her rear end with pent-up rage. The Boston accent made it hard to hear quite what threat she was mouthing as she left, but it seemed to involve the sheriff and hanging.