The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen (16 page)

“Hear that?” said Elijah, tilting his head into the cacophony of noise made by two steamer engines, a Niagara of water, piston rods thrashing, crankshafts turning, wakes hitting the shore, people shouting, joints creaking, hog chains and knuckle chains rattling. Within all that he had picked out a sound. The others were obliged to believe in it. They could hear nothing but a deafening racket.

The cockeyed paddle wheel chewed at the water like an old man with teeth in only one side of his head. The
Queen
herself refused to hurry, despite the bacon in her furnace. What would happen when they ran out of fuel altogether? Must they wash slowly down to Blowville, a powerless hulk once again? Well, let it be. With luck they would run aground and leave Cole Blacker nothing but a pile of matchwood to gloat over.

“He wanted so badly to win the
Queen
,” mused Everett, “and yet he was ready to smash her to Hades. There is something grievously wrong with that young man.”

And still they limped after Cole, at half power, to tell him his chimneys were scorching. Fleetingly Everett wondered what his brother Cyril would have done, but the thought only made him sadder, knowing he had just lost Cyril's showboat to a repellent little con artist.

Beside him, in the pilothouse, Elijah began to shout—an old man's creaking, croaking shout—toward the
Tula-Rose
:
“
Tula-Rose
, look to your chimneys! Look to your chimneys!”

Crew left Elijah shouting and went down to the bow, where he mustered everyone possible—even calling the stokers away from their furnaces. And they too yelled forward across the foaming white wake of the boat up ahead:
“
Tula-Rose
, look to your chimneys! Look to your chimneys!”
Their words were swallowed up like spray.

Up on the promenade deck, deafened by the thrashing paddle wheel, Cole Blacker grinned and grimaced at them, joining his hands into a fist over his head, like a champion boxer.

That was the moment when the boiler exploded.

Chapter Fourteen
Old Man River

T
he noise had a shape. It was a kick that hit them in the chest and bent their rib cages. The rest was played out in pantomime, because their hearing went. For a moment, Cissy thought her eyes had shattered, too; her vision was aflicker with slits of white. Then the splintered skin of the
Tula-Rose
began to rain down: planks and slats and spars and filigree cutwork, wicker and rattan, metal chimney cladding, paddle blades and louvers reduced to matchwood. A wave spread outward from the explosion. It picked up the
Sunshine Queen
and flexed her like a rug, cracking the vertebrae of her spine—piston rod, hogging chains, rudder bars. Then something fell on Cissy. She thought it must be the
Tula-Rose
falling out of the sky, for where else could it be? In the place where it had been a moment before was nothing but a smudge, a messy rubbing out, a white patch of steamy nothing.

The weight was Everett Crew's as he threw himself on top of her to shield her from the rain of scalding water that rode on the blast, the clattering avalanche of splintered metal and wood falling out of the wind. The whole river seethed, hollowing, refilling, slapping the golden walls of the gorge with choppy little waves the shape of hands. Then a larger wave washed over the
Queen
's cargo deck . . . and they were in the river.

Cissy barely knew it, for the water was tepid—blood temperature. Then the current brought down on her a tumbling white murrain of debris—smashed life rafts with edges jagged as knives, unbroken champagne bottles. For a few moments she was too startled to be afraid. Then the weight of her laced boots tugged her feet downward. The cloth of her skirt filled up with water and tangled around her legs. She felt for the bottom but found nothing—a shiver of shifting silt. She called out for Everett but was too deafened to hear her own voice.

Then Everett Crew surfaced beside her and told her everything was fine—a distant murmur, a movement of lips told her everything was fine.

But it wasn't.

An awning wrenched from the afterdeck of the
Tula-Rose
, shredded by the explosion, twisted by the river currents, enveloped them both—heavy wet canvas—a shroud for two dead sailors. It dragged them apart, pulled Cissy's fingers out of Everett's grip, carrying him away. And still, brittle petals of split wood were fluttering down out of the sky, chipping holes in the face of the water.

She unfastened her skirt and swam out of it, but her boots, her only good boots, her button boots that took five minute to fasten! “Ma will be livid,” she heard herself say.

High above her, shapes hung snagged on thornbushes in the crevices of the escarpment—garments, sacking, the rags of chintz curtains. Bizarrely, a train passed by on the cliff top. Silent to her muffled hearing, its windows full of white faces, it looked like a ghost train. “Never even knew there was a railway,” Cissy found herself saying out loud.

More strangely still, Kookie Warboys was standing on the river's surface. Water was churning around his feet, but there he stood, red hair plastered to his head, hands rubbing at deafened ears, eyes scanning the river, mouth calling her name over and over and over. . . .

There was screaming, too. She told herself there wasn't, but as her hearing returned, it was impossible to ignore. The scalded gorge was full of screaming.

Kookie dragged Cissy out onto the mud bar, where, within moments, Benet and Curly joined them. They had no way of knowing who else had been washed off the bow of the
Queen
. The boat had nestled herself comfortably into a crook of slack water, against the foot of the cliff, and along her rail, faces began to emerge as the remains of the Bright Lights Company pulled themselves to their feet. Sweeting, Oskar, George, Max, Boisenberry, and Elder Slater:

“
And Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven, and the LORD sent thunder and hail, and fire ran along upon the ground!”

Then they turned their eyes toward the small white reef that, minutes earlier, had been the
Tula-Rose
. It was barely more than a white picket fence—as if someone had tried to tame the river with a cartload of garden gates. One of the rowboats that had moored up to watch the race was already bobbing around, looking for survivors. Another must have found one, for it came by, full of screaming. Chips had been rescued into a third and went by, dripping like a seal; but though the Bright Lights called and called, the explosion had deafened him not just to their voices, but to their very existence. He never so much as glanced toward the
Sunshine
Queen
, and they never saw him again.

Of Cole Blacker, of course, there was not a sign. He would not be found. He had been standing directly above the starboard boiler when it exploded, liberating five thousand gallons of scalding water, superheated steam, and several tons of iron.

“Where's Everett?” asked Curly, missing his glasses, unable to see whether Crew's was among the faces on the
Queen
. “Is Everett there?”

“No,” said Cissy. “No.” And again, “No. He's in the river.”

Nearby, a floating shape broke the surface of the water, rounded like shoulder blades. Kookie and Curly stumbled along the mud bar, shoes sucked off, bare feet sinking into grit and black slime. Unable to reach the shape in the water, they flopped onto their faces and swam toward it. Toward what? Some maimed corpse, clothes burned off and scalded beyond recognition? Or was it the skin pink of someone who had struggled out of his Prince Albert coat and shirt in a failed effort to swim? Kookie was a good swimmer. He was there first. His fingertips touched the bristle of hair-tufted flesh, and as he did so, the floater turned over in the water.

A bacon flitch.

“You said we should save it,” said Kookie, and Curly gave a sob of a laugh and swallowed a stomachful of dirty river. The relief gave them the strength to quit the mudbar and swim within reach of hands, ropes, and encouraging shouts aboard the
Sunshine Queen
.

Everett Crew, dragged under by the awning, a tentacle of canvas around his throat, expressed the hope that someone would look after his wife and child. The child he would never live to see. His mouth filled with water and his nose emptied of air. His vision spangled with lights as crimson as Loucien's dress. Reaching out to feel its texture, his hand touched air, and then timber.

“I am too old for this, Lou,” he said as he wrapped arms and legs around the flotsam and dragged his face clear of the water for long enough to suck breath. “Should we keep to repertory work from now on?” The canvas tightened around his throat, the awning billowing beneath him dark as death. “I might even stoop to burlesque.” A charred pine knot struck him in the jaw, and he tasted blood. “Or a steady nine-to-five day job?” A slew of dead fish, silver sequins for eyes, rolled over his face.

At last the awning loosed its clutch, freeing Everett to collide with the fuel barge. Its crew of stokers, still marooned in midriver, did not even notice him. They stood atop the timber pile, too horror stricken even to flinch, staring upriver toward the explosion. Up yonder, carved in steam using hammer blows of noise, was the fate that would have been theirs if they had managed to scramble back aboard the
Tula-Rose
. They were half a mile from where the boiler had blown, and yet their complexions were pecked with little burns where scalding water drops had fallen into their upturned faces.

Everett had to pull himself up out of the river. He was amused to discover that he had ridden to safety aboard Max's plank.

The owner of the rowboat that carried him back to the
Queen
was anxious to know what it signified for the betting. The
Tula-Rose
had, after all, been in front when she blew up. Then again, the
Queen
was likely to make it up to the finish even if it took a while. “I had ten dollars on the
Rose
, see.”

Everett asked what line of business the man was in and, being told he was a bank teller—a regular nine-to-five man—decided to stay in acting after all. At least actors recognize a tragedy when they see one.

The Blacker family had just alighted from their fancy landau at Boats-a-Cummin wharf when the explosion happened. It was just as well, since the horses were so panicked that they turned the carriage over on its side and were left struggling in the traces. The passengers, by contrast, stood perfectly still on the jetty. Mr. and Mrs. Blacker, Loucien, Tibbie, Miss March, and an assortment of aunties. They looked up at the sky, waiting for news to settle onto their foreheads. Which of them had just lost everything?

“Yours,” said Old Man Blacker. “Derelict old tub. Not seaworthy.”

Loucien said nothing in reply. The baby inside her pummelled like a swimmer trapped under the hull of a sunken ship. More spectators had gathered at Boats-a-Cummin than anywhere along the course, hoping to witness the finish. They broke into a bedlam of noise now. Those in rowboats immediately cast off and started to row downriver. A train went by, and the passengers aboard had their heads out of the windows, shouting the news:

“Boat's gone up!”

“Blown to perdition!”

There were fragments of debris on the train's roof, but it did not stop to offload any better information.

“Yours!” said Mrs. Blacker, shaking Tibbie by the shoulders. “It was
your
boat!” Miss March snatched up Tibs and held her close.

“It's the
Queen
!” yelled a spectator.

“It's the
Tula-Rose
!” yelled another. Neither had any possible way of knowing.

“Look after Tibbie,” said Loucien to Miss May, and began walking back alone along the bank.

As Everett stood up in the rowboat, a stampede thudded down the cargo deck of the
Queen
, and a dozen hands hauled him over the bull rail. Curly could not think of a single quotation that expressed his delight at seeing Everett still alive. Kookie told him about the bacon flitch and how they had mistaken it for him. The quartet began a soft-shoe shuffle despite having only five shoes among them. Cissy simply wrapped her arms around his damp waist and wept.

“I don't know what you children were doing aboard in the first place,” said Everett, feeling the need to bring order to chaos. “I expressly said . . .”

Out on the river, a regatta had broken out, with little pleasure boats and canoes to-ing and fro-ing, taking in the sights, trawling for souvenirs, looking for survivors. Many parents in Blowville had sons who had gone out for an afternoon's sport with Cole Blacker. Some found their boys alive and safe aboard the fuel barge, and rowed them home to supper.

Some didn't.

“Where's Elijah?” asked Crew, missing a face.

They could not recall, for a moment, whether the old man had been in the engine room or steering when the explosion happened. Time had been jarred out of shape, and the details refused to fit back together.

“I shut down the port boiler,” said Chad. “He wasn't in the engine room then.” Their faces turned upward, necks craned. Crossing their minds were all the anecdotes Elijah had told them of pilothouses blown away in hurricanes or knocked overboard in collisions. They were relieved to see theirs still in place, perched up top like a howdah on an elephant's back.

“We forgot him,” said Kookie. “Our rememb'ring's gettin' bad as his!” And he laughed, but nervously, because why after all had Elijah not put in an appearance like everyone else?

“He's not partial to stairs,” said Cissy, hoping that was why.

The big ship's wheel turned a little as the wash from passing boats toyed with the rudder: clockwise to port, counterclockwise to starboard. It could not turn through more than five degrees, though, because its lower rim was wedged against Elijah.

When the
Tula-Rose
exploded, her piston rod had been fired aft through scalding air. It had hurtled, harpoonlike, out of the stern of the
Tula
and in at the open shutters of the
Queen
's pilothouse, striking Elijah a glancing blow to the head before passing effortlessly on through the back wall. It lay now like a harmless length of bathroom piping, along the Texas, whereas Elijah . . .

Elijah was peacefully curled up like a child sound asleep, on the mattress they had laid down for him. The wheel spokes nudge-nudge-nudged at him, but he did not stir.

Hemmed in, as they were, by the walls of the gorge, the crew of the
Queen
would find it difficult to get Elijah ashore. They lowered him, on the mattress, down to the cargo deck and hailed the various rowboats plowing up and down. But the people of Blowville took no notice—blamed them for the accident, perhaps, or were just too busy picking over the floating wreckage of the
Tula-Rose
. So the company laid Elijah and the mattress on a life raft. It was not stable enough to sail all the way back to Blowville, so they headed instead for the steps by the derelict boathouse—a little flotilla of mildewed and rotten life rafts, paddled by soaked, soot stained, weary ship's rats. Their decision was helped by the figure of a red-haired woman waving to them from the bottom stair.

Until the reunion with Loucien, no one but Cissy had wept. Even now there was no flinging of arms around necks, no tender embraces, no cries of “I thought I had lost you!” There was just a general drizzling of noses, the chafing of a hand against a sleeve, an increased blood supply to the heart . . . which was just as well: it was quite a climb up those rock-hewn steps carrying between them an old man on a mattress. Loucien laid her jacket over Elijah's face, to keep the flies off the gash in his head.

“What's up there at the top, Miss Loucien? Are we trespassing?” asked Cissy.