***
THE NEXT DAY, fifty people showed up to paint. The stacks were washed down with stove black; the outside of cabin doors, the rails, the first-deck planking, and the boat’s name-in four-foot letters on the engine-room bulkhead-were dressed with burgundy gloss enamel. The paddlewheel was painted bright red and everything else, from the circus molding branching out from the deck posts to the balusters and fire buckets, a sun-tossing white. Inside, when everything was scrubbed and enameled white, the spaces loomed larger, the huge dance floor now cavernous, the whole interior glowing like a snow cave. After he used turpentine to get the sticky oil paint from his hands and forearms, Sam jumped on shore and walked way back from the boat to look her over: in the early evening light she was a three-hundred-foot wedding cake. The running lights came on at the top of the stacks, and then the thousand roofline bulbs sent up their ivory fire, the whole boat flashing against the dark canal and floating above it like someone’s dream of a traveling good time. Inside, a pianist was running the moths out of the bandstand piano with “Dill Pickles Rag,” the notes completing the paint-bright illusion that made him want to pat his foot.
Charlie followed over to where he stood by a coal pile. “Sam, my man. What you think?”
He raised a hand, then let it fall. “I can’t understand it. A few days ago it was a stinking washtub. Now I want to buy a ticket for the moonlight cruise.”
Chapter Six
ACY WHITE owned the only bank in the riverside town of Graysoner, Kentucky. He was a thin, sallow man, a Presbyterian-for-show, the grandson of a plantation owner who had owned many slaves in Mississippi. He held risky mortgages on dozens of little farms and owned personal loans made to hundreds of the county’s lesser inhabitants, in this respect continuing his grand-father’s slaver persona. Though he loaned money to most businesses in the area, nobody knew him well. He was not a gregarious and sweating banker, the usual tobacco-soaked, seersucker-wearing steak eater one finds in small Southern towns. He was neither a skinflint nor an easy touch, though now and then a wiry meanness flashed in his eyes. Acy believed in his inalienable right to whatever it was he wanted. He was remarkable for only one thing, his devotion to his wife, Willa, a blank slate of a woman he’d created out of his imagination.
Willa Stanton White, forty-year-old daughter of a wealthy lumber family from Gipson County, spent much of her time reading and rereading a leatherbound and gilt collection of Sir Walter Scott novels her husband had bought her and practicing Franz von Suppé transcriptions on the piano. Willa was an only child who had been spoiled beyond all measure and who’d allowed herself to be chosen by a man bent on honoring that tradition. For a small-town woman she owned brave sexual appetites and was an encouraging partner for Acy, though at times he seemed too tired to meet her demands. She had few close friends in town, though she knew many citizens at a hand-waving distance. Favoring expensive clothes designed to seem modest, she was not a stupid woman, but isolated and logic-deprived, raised on illusions and no work whatsoever.
At noon Acy left the bank in his new Oldsmobile, jittering over the redbrick street up the hill to his house, a three-story Greek revival with a windowed cupola on top from which one could just barely see the river two miles away. He went in and washed his hands in the downstairs bathroom under the stairs and sat in the dining room to wait for his lunch. Vessy, a thin serving girl from out of the eastern Kentucky mountains, hipped open the swinging kitchen door and in one motion set down a plate of beef stew and noodles and a glass of iced tea.
“Are they home?” He raised his chin to her.
She brushed her straight, near-colorless hair out of her gray eyes. “They’ll get down directly.”
“I thought they might have gone out in the other car.”
“Naw. The missus stickin’ close to the house.” Vessy pulled the silver condiment rack closer to Acy and left the room.
He’d finished half his meal when his wife and the little girl came in. Willa had her hand on the child’s back, guiding her to a chair next to Acy.
The child’s hair was an odd two-inch length all over, but her face was composed and engaged. “Hi,” she said.
Acy looked down at her. “Hi what?”
She shrugged. “Hi hi?”
“Madeline, you can call me Daddy now.”
“This lady said my daddy’s in heaven.”
He gave his wife an uneasy glance. “Yes, and I’ve replaced him. I’m your new daddy. And you shouldn’t call Willa ‘this lady.’ You can call her Mother.”
The girl looked away and bit her top lip.
Willa sat down. “Can you call me Mother?” She made a face full of mock deference that the child saw through at once, narrowing her eyes and remaining silent. “Well, it’ll come in time.” She flipped a starched napkin across her lap.
The kitchen door flew open and Vessy swung into the room carrying two plates of food. She didn’t look at the child, even as her arm passed around the little head.
“Madeline, can you remember this gal’s name?” Acy asked.
The child picked up her fork and then looked at Vessy’s face, smiling slightly. “Miss Vessy,” she said.
Acy wiped his mouth and took a swallow of tea. “Just Vessy is sufficient,” he said.
“What’s ‘sufficient’?” The girl picked up a noodle with her fingers and dangled it like a fishing worm.
“It means good enough,” Acy told her. “You don’t put ‘Miss’ in front of a hillbilly girl’s name.”
The child watched as Vessy refilled the man’s glass of tea and silently left the room, her face artfully turned away from them.
***
AFTER LUNCH the girl was left in the upstairs nursery with the maid, and Willa came down to share an after-dinner drink with her husband. From a decanter kept out of sight in a side table, she poured herself three fingers of bourbon in two fingers of water.
Acy lit a cigar and leaned back into a velvet chair. “What did you tell Vessy?”
“The same.”
“What, exactly? I’ve got to keep tabs on all this explaining.”
Willa took a long sip and wiped her lips with a lace handkerchief. “That Madeline came from an orphanage in Cincinnati. Her head was shaved for sanitary reasons by the orphanage, and her parents were killed in a railroad accident of some sort, just recently.”
He puffed steadily, slowly exhausting the smoke. “Good,” he said. “Are you still happy?”
Willa’s face brightened. “Yes. She’s everything I could have wished for. Smart as a whip and pretty as can be.”
He looked out of the window down the hill. They had tried to have a baby for ten years, but something was wrong, and their physical enjoyment only mocked them. As more time passed, Willa’s longing for a child was something she couldn’t put out of her mind, and the barren years had nearly driven her crazy. They’d visited orphanages in several states, but even when they would find a bright-cheeked child, clever and healthy, Willa always saw something in the hopeful face that made it impossible to claim.
She poured herself another splash and took it down like a soft drink. “What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know. I’m glad we found Madeline. Glad she’s not an orphan.”
“Oh.” She remembered the trips, the smells of want, the expressions on small faces taught by being passed over for the smarter child, the blue-eyed child. These visits drove home that all orphans were unlucky, and she realized she wanted something else-a child fortunate enough to be currently loved. Perhaps she felt herself incapable of raising a child to whom she could give love. She didn’t really understand the feeling and was mystified by her husband’s powerful devotion.
Across town the sawmill whistle blew the get-ready signal to bring the workers off their lunch break, and Acy stood up, just a little dizzy from his toddy, and went to retrieve his straw hat from the hook. He moved to where his wife was sitting on an embroidered dining-room chair and gave her a kiss on the softest part
of her cheek, next to the mouth, where a drop of bourbon burned his lips.
Chapter Seven
THE NEW ORLEANS papers advertised that the Ambassador would operate one dance trip at eight p.m. as a break-in for her new season. Sam boarded the boat that morning and went up to his cabin on the Texas deck, where his third mate’s uniform was laid out on the bunk, a blue jacket with a gold stripe on the sleeve and a billed officer’s cap, on its front a gold wreath encircling the name of the boat. He put it on and felt silly at first, but stepping out on deck and climbing upstairs to the Texas roof, he looked the glossy boat over fore and aft, and the cloth began to claim him. The outfit made him part of another trade as surely as did a railroader’s overalls or his fine floorwalker’s suits. Captain Stewart was standing next to the steps leading up to the pilothouse, surrounded by men also in uniform. He spoke curtly to one young man, who turned away and ran to a stairway, his shoes clattering down toward the water. To the next he said, “Well, tell him we want squirrel-nut coal. With the current so stiff we can’t use that damned Birmingham slag he’s so hot to sell us.” Another man peeled out of the group, and the captain turned to the third. “If the concession man doesn’t like our Negro band, tell him to put on blinders. They’ll save us twenty dollars a day in wages, and the dancers like their music better anyway.” To the next he said, “Look at the sky, man. It’s going to be hot, so run all the ceiling fans and put more steam to our generator engine. It don’t take a genius to figger that out.”
The last man, very old, short, wearing a neatly ironed uniform and bow tie, looked down as the captain put an arm over his shoulders and said, “Look, she’s a crackerjack pilot and she’s caught up on all the channel between here and St. Louis. She’s good up to Cincinnati as well.”
The old man shook his head. “She’s a lady, and I don’t know if she can think like a pilot’s got to think.”
“Her husband was Denk Benton.”
“I know who she is, all right.”
“She took a contract for a little more than half what you make,” the captain said, his voice more respectful. “Rafe, she worked on the Blazer with oil barges up the Ouachita.”
“She could handle the Blazer on that drainpipe of a river?”
“Yep.”
The little man shrugged off the captain’s arm. “Well, it’s all right with me if you want to risk turning your dance boat into five hundred tons of stovewood.”
“That’s the ticket, Rafe.” And the captain looked back at the stern, where a man was coming on carrying a big Stillson wrench. He glanced at Sam. “Now, who are you?”
“Sam Simoneaux.” He pointed to his hat. “Third mate.”
Captain Stewart stared at him, deadpan. “Remind me, son.”
“Elsie Weller asked you to hire me.”
He nodded. “Yes, that’s right. Walk the boat and meet everyone. Every last man. Keep your hat clean and drink your coffee.” He turned away when the smudged fellow carrying the wrench walked up and began complaining about his salary.
Since he was already on the roof he stepped up into the gingerbread wheelhouse, curious to meet this lady pilot. He was surprised to see Nellie Benton, the woman he’d delivered the horses to in town, standing behind the steering tillers wearing a navy polka-dot dress, a whorl of gray hair flowing from under a pilot’s cap.
“Well,” she said, “it’s the wagon master.”
He swallowed hard and knew he must be showing his surprise. “Hello, ma’am.”
“Hello yourself. I saw you wandering around down there. You ever see a lady pilot?”
“No, ma’am, I guess not.”
“Well, now that your curiosity’s settled, get on down to the engine room and ask Bit Benton-that’s the engineer on watch now-if he’s finished working on the steering engine. If he is, tell him to let me know through the speaking tube.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Sam, is it?”
“That’s right.”
“I heard you kind of backed into the steamboat business.”
“I seem to back into most things.”
“Don’t your wife feed you?”
He looked down at his stomach. “I like being light on my feet.”
“Well, if you’re a real steamboat man likely the kitchen’ll fat you up.”
He went down to give the message to a testy and red-faced Bit, and coming out of the engine-room door he bumped into Charlie Duggs. “Hey. I’ll see you later. I’m supposed to be introducing myself around.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Duggs said to Sam’s back.
He met busboys and waiters on the second deck, several members of a large black orchestra, the concessions master, the chief cook, the head steward, two white musicians standing around listening to the black men practice, and the Wellers, who were coming down the starboard staircase from the Texas deck. With them was a big-shouldered boy of about fifteen, composed, wearing a sport coat, one hand in a pocket. They walked together to the end of the enormous dance floor. Sam looked back over the glossy planks. “How’s it going?”
Ted Weller pulled a handkerchief and mopped his head. “Not so good. The captain let most of the white orchestra go and picked up the black fellows over there to play the main night trips. He said he had to go with what the dancers liked.”
Sam looked back toward the bandstand. Earlier that year, he’d heard, Captain Quincy had taken the Moonlight Deluxe out on a harbor cruise downtown. He put a good white hotel orchestra on the main dance floor, a first-class group in tux and tails, and a Negro jazz band upstairs on the dim, open hurricane deck. Halfway through the cruise everybody was dancing up in the open night, and the main dance floor was nearly empty. That pretty much said it all. “The sound gets in your feet, all right.”
“Captain says if we hit some towns that won’t listen to colored music, we can slap together about seven boys for a dance trip. But the whites will only play the afternoon runs when nobody dances much anyway.”
Elsie settled one hip against a bulkhead. “Ted can play piano for the black band if the captain lets him. He’s figured how they cut the melody loose from the time signature.”
“What’ll you do?”
She shrugged. “I could sing with the day band, you know, and even with a black band if it was okay. I’d sing with them steady if it was up to me, but in some of these towns, you know how it is. Nowadays I’m doing laundry and setting out tablecloths on deck three.” She put a hand on the top of the boy’s head. “Our son here plays a mean alto sax, but now he’s in the boiler galley passing coal.”
At the mention of his name, the boy stuck out his hand. “Hiya. My name’s August.”
“Hey, bud. Stay away from those boilers.” Sam looked in the boy’s eyes and saw that he was smart, maybe the kind of kid who breathed in knowledge and exhaled accomplishment.
“Aw, I’ll be up on the bandstand again someday.” He ran a hand over his slicked-back blond hair.
“You play with the big orchestra?”
“They’ve let me sit in a few times a week. I can sight-read real well.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “In your spare time maybe you can teach me.”
At the midship bandstand the orchestra struck up an embroidered rendition of “Frankie and Johnny,” mostly in a straight dance rhythm but with the beat and melody disconnecting in the repeat. The music was good. Sam could feel the notes ride up his shinbones into his hips. It made him think of the barrel houses next to Storyville, which more than once he’d stopped into for a beer and a lookaround. The band warmed up like an engine, getting better at what they were doing with each measure, the big piano holding everything together. “Some stuff. Kind of snappy for the excursion trade.”
A boat whistle sounded in the canal and Ted pulled out his watch. “Nowadays most dancers like whatever’s hot stuff. Ten years ago it was ragtime and cakewalks. Makes you wonder what they’ll like in fifty years.”
August’s eyes lit up. He reached over and popp
ed his father’s left gallus. “It’ll sound like a thunderstorm in an oil drum.”
***
THE ENGINEER was warming up the machinery on a slow bell, the paddlewheel treading water, the boat doing a dreamy two-degree wallow at the dock. Then a big deep groan of the whistle rattled the dance-floor windows, the lines were cast off, and the Ambassador ascended the canal’s flat greasy water toward the Mississippi River locks. By early afternoon she had come out into the chocolate chop below Algiers Point and was stretching her legs against the current, paddling in toward the Esplanade Avenue wharf. Mrs. Benton maneuvered around, brought her in slowly next to the dock, the hull sliding to a stop without a bump, the deckhands scrambling to catch the bollards with their lines before she drifted back out.
The boat’s advertising had announced the point of departure for the night’s trip, a hard-to-reach landing instead of the more popular wharf at the foot of Canal Street. The captain had called it a shakedown, a trip to make sure the machinery was up to the big river.
Sam was sent down to watch the first customers hustle up the wide stage plank. The captain drew him aside on the main deck around six o’clock.
“Son, these New Orleans crowds aren’t so bad. It’s a good-time town. But if someone tries to come on with a baseball bat, a belt knife, or you spot a pistol in someone’s waistband, you tell them you’ve got to borrow it until we land again.”
“What if they won’t turn it in?”
“Then you kick the son of a bitch into the river.”
“What about if I see someone bringing on liquor?”
The captain leaned close, frowning. “Hell, son. That’s what we sell setups for. Once we leave the bank we’re sort of a separate country.”
“I got it. Anything else?”
“Keep a lookout for that woman.”
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