The pilot walked up stiff-legged and slapped a folder of papers against his chest. “Bring these up to the pilothouse, young man, and lay them out on the liars’ bench for me.”
He took the papers and looked at them dumbly. “What are they?”
“Well, if you have to know, they’re the channel reports up to Pittsburgh. Off with you before you forget where you’re going and lose them.”
He walked up to the Texas deck, and as he turned for the steps leading to the pilothouse, he passed the cabin that Elsie shared with August, and coming from inside was the thing he most feared hearing: the bawling, incoherent voice that signaled August’s fall from childhood into a wild, uncharted, dead-serious place cut off from fathers and all things those fathers teach and give. For a moment Sam stopped and shared the immeasurable and growing loss.
***
THE NEXT DAY he helped carry their bags up the hill to the streetcar that would bring them to the station. Elsie had drawn their pay and figured they’d have enough to bury Ted and begin installments on his medical bills. Beyond that, she didn’t know what they’d do. When the streetcar appeared far down the street, she grabbed his lapel and shook it.
“Lucky, you’ve got your own life to live. I appreciate what you’ve done to find Lily, coming along with us and all. But it’s not working.” She began to cry. “She’s out there in the world somewhere, but it’s too big a place. Just too big.” She put her forehead against his shoulder for a moment. “If I ever get some money I’ll hire someone to look for her. I really don’t know what else to do. I don’t have a cent. I don’t know if I ever will now that he’s gone.”
He looked up the long street at the stone and brick buildings, wondering how anyone ever put together the money to build them. No one he knew had more than a few dollars saved. “I’ll ride out this circuit on the boat. It might look like I haven’t done much, but I’ve put out feelers all along.”
“If you hear anything, you have my mother’s address in Cincinnati.”
“That’s right.” He gave August a pat on the arm. “So long, bud.”
“Yeah.” The boy stared blankly down the street, his shoulders rolled forward in the wind like an old man’s.
***
THE GREENVILLE STATION agent, Morris Hightower, dozed in his chair next to the telegraph sounder. The room was hot as an attic, the next southbound wasn’t due for an hour, and the local switch engine was out in the country switching the lumber mills. He had a headache, and each eyelid felt as if it had a lead sinker glued to it. The sounder came alive in its box, and he reached for a Western Union pad. Dr. John Adoue of Memphis sent a message to the husband of Mrs. Stacy Higman telling of the outcome of her operation for female problems. He copied several lines of medical descriptions and the statement that Mr. Higman would call at the station for the telegram at five p.m. Morris sent a 73 on his bug, folded the telegram, and placed it in a window envelope. Settling back into the bay window of the station, he looked with one eye down the track to the south. He was feeling worthless and burned out in several ways, old, sickly even. Surely there was something he should be doing with his life other than sitting here sweating. Slowly, his head drifted back, his mouth fell open, and his upper plate floated down with a click.
Some time later, two cotton buyers barged into the waiting room complaining to each other about the market, and the bigger one bellied up to the counter. “Wake up there ’fore you catch a fly.”
Morris lifted one eyelid. “Do for you?”
“We need tickets to Graysoner, Kentucky.”
“What class?”
“We can stand day coach if there’s a parlor car for a good poker game.”
“There is.” He pulled out his guide to see what the connections were past Memphis and told them it would take a while to set up the tickets as they involved three different railroads. While he worked, the men chattered around their cigars about cotton prices and the damned bankers not wanting to loan money on signature anymore. The voices were just noise; some of it went in his ear, some of it didn’t. Then one of them mentioned a banker in Graysoner who’d demanded a whole cotton shipment for collateral on a small loan.
“I went to grammar school with Acy. He knew me when I still peed my pants, and when I asked for enough to ship eight thousand bales, just the shipping, mind you, he wanted to put the whole crop subject to duress in a contract.”
“You don’t say.”
“Sure enough. And I’ve been a guest in his house, made small talk with that odd wife of his.”
“I know her. She ever do anything other than walk around and shop?”
“When I was in his office she came in there with a sweet, crop-haired little girl, so I guess he finally put a bun in the oven.”
The other buyer pulled his cigar and looked at the soggy end. “Well, maybe that’ll sweeten his disposition.”
The men stepped out into the sun to look down the line and tell a joke. When they came back into the waiting room, a heat-drunk Morris Hightower was at the window with their tickets, his red face against the bars. “So Acy has a little girl?”
One of the cotton buyers looked at him and made a face. “You from Kentucky?”
“Agents know everybody up and down the line. She’s not a baby, is she?”
“She’s about three years old.”
“Cropped hair, you say?”
“Yes.” The buyer looked at him hard.
“Did they tell you how good she could sing? About all those songs?”
At this, the cotton buyer smiled. “Why, you do know the Whites!”
Morris Hightower laughed for the first time in a long while. “It’s a small world.”
***
THE CROWDS AT CAIRO were moderate in size and well behaved, so the order was not given to check for weapons. After an easy night trip, Sam was washing up at the little lavatory and inspecting his two uniforms, which were not holding up well.
“I told the captain I needed another jacket,” he said over his shoulder to Charlie, who was in his bunk holding an unlit cigarette under his nose.
“What’d he tell you?”
“Said I’d have to buy it out of my salary.”
“What you think about that?”
“I don’t know. It’d take two or three days’ wages to get one that’d last through the fights.”
“It’d be nine dollars or better, anyway. The boat raked in a fortune at Stovepipe Bend. The purser like to got a hernia haulin’ the change bags up the hill this morning.”
“Sometimes I think I’d be making more as a waiter, with the tips and all.”
“You could get into that late-night game down in the galley.”
“I gave that stuff up.”
“Then hold on to your pennies.” The cigarette traveled slowly under his nose. They were not allowed to smoke in the cabins. “You still thinking about that young’un?”
“I walked into town and spoke with the police captain. Went by the station and talked to the agent. He was full of information but mostly wanted to sell me some raffle tickets.”
“What’d he tell you?”
“About another boy they gave off the orphan train. I called this farmer up on the phone and sure enough it was a boy.”
The cabin door was open, and Charlie hopped down and walked right out to the rail to light up and watch the stars. “You give any more thought to the Cloats?”
“Not enough to ruin my day.”
“Damn, you’re worthless.”
“I’m thinking about it. You got to give me that.”
The Alice Brown passed downbound pushing a big raft of coal barges, the glow from her furnace doors sparking up the water. Her carbon-arc light raked the Ambassador and moved over the channel like a wand of ice.
“What’d Elsie say when you walked her to the streetcar?”
“Not much. Said she couldn’t even imagine he was dead. That she had to hold off thinking until she got up there.”
“I
can’t believe old Ted’s gone myself. It’ll be a tough row to hoe for the both of them. The kid’s too young to play in the union bands. You say she’ll be living with her sick mother?”
“Starving is more like it. Her father’s too old to work anymore.”
Charlie drew in a lungful of smoke and let it out slow. “At least she’s got that boy with her. It could be worse.”
“Don’t say that. For God’s sake, don’t even think it.”
***
ABOVE CAIRO the Ambassador steamed into more populated regions where people in the civilized river towns looked forward to the new dance music promised by the flyers posted on every cottonwood by the advance man. Radios, the few there were in these rural areas, didn’t play New Orleans jazz, and record companies weren’t promoting it either. But the Ambassador had the real, rare commodity, and over the next week the boat did good business at Mound City, Metropolis, and Paducah, though at a mining town called Potato Landing, all three mates and six waiters were injured in a huge café brawl between baseball teams from opposite sides of the river. The boat was left in such a sorry condition that Sunday’s afternoon run at Evansville was canceled, and Captain Stewart gave the crew as much time off as possible. Sam went up to town to attend Mass and then find the railroad station. The agent looked at his bruised face and wouldn’t answer any questions, so he walked back to the river, stopping several times to let a leg cramp die down. He’d been kicked by a drunk woman after he’d pulled her away from a slot machine she was hammering with a high heel. Hobbling up to a corner bench, he sat and rubbed his calf, feeling silly and useless, a fool matched with a fool’s errand. He thought again longingly of his wife and his lost kingdom at Krine’s. A long vista of cottonwoods rising up from the Kentucky side made him feel solitary, small, and a long way from the house.
But when he returned to the boat, the advance man, a vest-wearing glad-hander named Jules, buttonholed him on the stage and handed him a telegram. “Here you go, bud.”
“Where’s it from?”
“Can’t you read?” The advance man jumped off the stage to the mud and headed for his idling Model T.
It was from Greenville, Mississippi, and the very paper felt crisp with possibility. He tore it open. THIS A GOOD LEAD. ACY WHITE AND WIFE. GRAYSONER KENTUCKY. LET ME KNOW. MORRIS.
He ran across the forecastle and asked a deckhand if he knew where Graysoner was.
“Don’t know, Cap. The chief steward upstairs, maybe he knows.”
He raced up the big staircase and walked back to the restrooms, where he saw the man talking to a janitor. “Can you tell me where Graysoner is?”
The chief steward looked at his face and winced. “Rough time last night. Graysoner the new man what replaced that old Jenkins boy with the broke leg?”
“No, it’s a town in Kentucky.”
“It’s a town.”
“That’s right.”
“Go see Mr. Check in the kitchen. He’s from Kentucky.”
Mr. Check, the head cook, was scraping down a stove top with a firebrick. “Naw, I ain’t from Kentucky. I was raised in St. Marys, West Virginia. The steward’s thinking of that Meldon feller who cooked for us two years gone. Go ask the captain. Maybe ten minutes ago I saw him kicking cinders off the skylight roof.”
He walked forward, but the captain was nowhere to be seen, so he took the stairs up to the Texas deck and found the first mate in his cabin. Swaneli was propped in his bunk reading a week-old newspaper from Chicago. “Lucky, what’s up?”
“I need to know where Graysoner, Kentucky, is.”
“It’s up ahead somewheres.”
“On the river?”
“Or close to it. Ask someone in the pilothouse, if anybody’s up there.”
He ducked into the companionway and went up the steps to the Texas roof and saw Mr. Brandywine’s cap moving about. He tapped on the narrow door and the old man waved him in with one crooked finger. He was leaning down over a river chart.
“Mr. Brandywine, can you tell me where Graysoner, Kentucky, is?”
“We’ll play there in a few days if I can get this boat in among the rocks.”
Sam leaned back against the door and caught his breath. “Is it another pigpen?”
“Well, it’s not a big town, but there’s five little burgs right around it, and all in all it’s a decent place to play. The people there know how to behave themselves.”
“Nice place to live?”
Brandywine leaned down over his channel map and pursed his lips, slowly placing a finger on a blue line passing between islands. “Paved streets. Electric lights. Good stores. Right now you can go down and get me a mug of hot coffee.”
“You heard about Ted Weller.”
“Of course. The captain gave his wife an extra fifty dollars when he paid her off. Told her she could come back and work the end of the season if she wanted. But you know she can’t.”
Sam reached over and gathered up two empty mugs. “Her life’s pretty much wrecked.”
“That’s a good way to put it, all right. She’ll be starting from scratch, I imagine.” Mr. Brandywine looked at him sharply. “Were you sweet on her?”
“I’m a married man.”
“I hope you plan to stay that way.”
He motioned at him with the mugs. “I’m very happy with my wife.”
“Don’t take offense. I’ve seen you sitting with Mrs. Weller at table with her son.”
“And?”
Mr. Brandywine’s eyes narrowed at some problem on the map. “And would you please get me my coffee?”
Chapter Twenty-one
THE EVANSVILLE WHARF boat had an excellent telephone connection in a little private room used by freight brokers. Here Sam sat in a chair and called his wife, collect, and after three operators made the links, she picked up the receiver on their candlestick phone in New Orleans.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Oh, Sam, I’m glad to hear from you. How are you?”
“I’m fine. I’m in Evansville.”
“Where is that?”
“Illinois, right above Kentucky. How are you? Your last letter said you were kind of sick.”
“I’ve been feeling so bad I had to go to the doctor. It got so I couldn’t work for a week.”
He moved closer to the phone and felt a rill of fear run up his arms and across his chest. “The doctor? Is something wrong? What kind of doctor?”
“Dr. Duplessis, the one you go to.”
He felt a pain rise in the pit of his stomach. There was so much bad luck going around, he wondered if he was in for his share. “Did he give you some medicine? What did he say?”
Her voice was thin but musical, even over the wire. “He said we’re going to have a baby. I feel so stupid because here I thought I was sick all summer and it turns out I’m over three months along. Are you happy?”
“Yes!” He made a punching swing with his left hand. “I’m more than happy! Do you need me home?”
There was static on the line, and then her voice came back. “I know you want to look for that little girl and I want you to keep on. I don’t want to make you mad, but I’ve got to tell you that the money you’ve been sending home isn’t quite enough, honey.”
“It isn’t?”
“We’ll have to get set up here and pay the doctor, you know. The furniture people haven’t ordered much of my needlepoint this month.”
“Maybe I can figure something on this end to make a few extra bucks.”
“Sergeant Muscarella called and said the bank on Baronne needs a superintendent of its bank guards there. I think it pays what you’re making now, but with no expenses.” There was a brief pause in her voice. “And you’d be home.”
He told her they could discuss that soon. He wanted to talk for a long time, just to hear her voice, but she reminded him the call was expensive. When he came out of the room he realized he hadn’t even told her about the Wellers. He saw Charlie Duggs,
and they climbed the hill into town to celebrate with a beer. In the back room of a speakeasy they got into a poker game and Sam lost over three dollars, and later, walking back down into the coal smoke of the dock area, he cursed the jack of hearts that did him in. “I can’t figure what I did wrong,” he complained.
Charlie spat next to the Ambassador’s stage as they went up. “I think it’s called playin’ poker. Lucky in cards you ain’t.”
“Three dollars. Linda could’ve paid the light bill with that.”
Charlie stopped to set his watch under a deck light. “Or you could’ve bought a little Cloat-killing pistol with it.”
***
IN LATE SUMMER the Ohio River is a hazy green, and Sam watched it slide under the bow of the steamer like an endless watery lawn. After six hard days of day trips for veterans’ conventions, Elks lodges, and high schools, night trips for mostly easy crowds intent on practicing their new steps or proposing romance on the dark upper deck, the boat pulled in one morning to the landing at Graysoner. Sam leaned on the Texas deck railing, his bruises driven inside where they banded together and roamed his burning shoulders and lower back. He stared hard at the town, watching it develop out of a fog as Nellie Benton drifted the boat in, and after the docking he hiked up to the main business section, several blocks of well-maintained and amply stocked brick stores fronted by paved streets with curbs and electric streetlights. Water oaks had been planted twenty years before, and the lanes above the business district were shady and lush. Upriver he saw the masonry smokestack bearing the name of a furniture factory, and judging from even the modest houses, everyone here made more money than he did. He was out of the Deep South and could smell the money and comfort.
He left his uniform behind in his cabin and wore his best shirt, which needed ironing and mending at the cuffs. Going into a drugstore, a place with marble counters and waxed-oak display cases, he asked to see a phone book. Sure enough, he found an Acy White at 653 Lilac Street. He grinned in spite of himself.
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