Houseboat Girl

by Lois Lenski

  Patsy hardly took time to eat. She left the table and went out on the river bank to close up her chicken coop. It was dark now and the hens were inside. Dan helped her carry the coop to the cabin boat. Patsy called Blackie, the dog, and told him they were leaving next day. Blackie wagged his tail—it was all right with him.

  That night everybody went to bed early. The next morning when Mama called the children to get up, Daddy was back with the fish, about thirty pounds. They ate breakfast by the light of the kerosene lamp. The houseboat was out in the river by the time the sun was up.

  There was no one to wave to, no one to call good-bye. It made Patsy think of the time they had left River City. There was nothing permanent about river life. People on the river were always coming and going. Here today and gone tomorrow, as Daddy said. That big old river was always calling you to leave the river bank and go places. And nobody cared if you went or stayed. This time there were no close friends being left behind. Patsy could not mourn the loss of the Preston children who had never come to play by the river, and whom she knew only by sight.

  Patsy sat on the front deck with Blackie and looked ahead. It was good to be on the river again. Life in Mayfield Creek had become dull and monotonous. On the river there was always something new to see. The river was full of bends. The houseboat was always turning corners and coming out on a new stretch. Every bend brought a new landscape, and often there were boats and barges to be seen. Patsy could not see much of the towns, they were too far back. Some were hidden behind the levees and, she never knew they were there at all unless she looked at the map.

  Sometimes she watched the buoys and navigation lights that marked the channel. The current in the Mississippi was unpredictable. The channel never seemed to follow the course of the stream itself. It wiggled around between the banks, often moving from one side to the other in a “crossing.” In low water the crossings were well marked with buoys. Wherever the channel crossed the river, there was a river light or a day mark on the opposite bank. From each light or mark, the pilot set his course on the next one. One mark picked him up and called him, then sent him on to the next.

  “There are so many lights and buoys on the river,” said Daddy, “any fool can keep in the channel.”

  The lights were oil lamps, set on tripod posts twelve feet high, with a ladder to reach up. They burned round the clock with a flame so small it hardly showed by day, but was magnified by the globe at night. They burned kerosene and were tended every fourth day by a lamplighter.

  In the middle of the morning, Patsy saw a ferryboat crossing the river ahead. She called Dan and told him.

  “Is this a town we’re coming to?” asked Dan.

  Patsy looked at the map. Mama had taken map No. 3 out of the River Map book and tacked it up on the wall.

  “It’s Columbus, Kentucky!” cried Patsy. “We’re there already. Boy! Don’t I wish I could have a ride on that ferryboat!”

  She and Dan and Bunny waved to the people on the ferry. Daddy nosed the houseboat in on the Missouri side below the ferry landing, and tied up under some willows. Mama had dinner ready and as soon as Daddy washed up, they ate. Across the river on the Kentucky side, they could see the high bluffs called the Iron Banks. Daddy said they were the highest bluffs between Cairo and Memphis. There was a muddy bar below them.

  “Can we go to town? Can we go to town?” cried the children.

  Mama and Daddy got ready to take the fish to Columbus. Mama said Patsy and Dan could go, so they quickly washed and put on their good clothes. Milly offered to stay on the houseboat and keep Bunny, if Mama would stop at the post office for the mail order package. Bunny cried when they left, so they promised to bring her candy.

  They crossed the river in the johnboat and went to the fish market of Jim Tom Cheney, who bought all they had. Hearing a band playing, Mama and the children went off downtown, leaving Daddy at Jim Tom’s. Several hours later they came back and found Daddy very impatient. “I want to set my lines tonight,” he scolded.

  “But Daddy!” cried Patsy. “Guess where we went!”

  “They had a circus and we went to it,” said Dan.

  “A circus! What next?”

  The children were so happy Daddy had to cheer up. All the way across the river they talked about the acrobats they had seen. When they reached the houseboat, they told Milly and Bunny about it. They gave Bunny the candy they had brought for her. Milly asked about the mail-order package, but Mama shook her head. There was nothing at the post office.

  As soon as Patsy changed into her shorts, she started skinning the cat from the overhead porch beam.

  “You’ll be breakin’ your neck now for sure!” said Mama.

  The next morning Daddy got up early to run his lines. Before breakfast he had taken his fish catch over to Jim Tom Cheney. Now he had a little more change in his pocket. By the time the children had eaten their breakfast, the houseboat had resumed its voyage down river.

  As Patsy dried the dishes, she looked out the window. It was like a moving picture, she thought, something different every minute as the banks started marching past. Each time she picked up a dish and looked out again, the scene had changed. The river made so many turns she was never sure whether she was looking at Kentucky or Missouri. Sometimes the sun shone in the windows over the sink and a little later it would be coming in through the windows opposite, as if it were afternoon. That was because the river was flowing north.

  Milly got out the big fat mail-order catalogue and spent a long time looking at it. Mama had brought out her box of quilt patches and was cutting new ones.

  “I hope my new dress comes soon,” Milly said to Mama. “The dresses I get from the catalogue fit me better than those bought in the stores. The stores in these little old river towns are no good anyhow. My old dresses are all too small. I’ll give them to Patsy.”

  “I don’t want your hand-me-downs,” said Patsy.

  “Don’t be too choosey, honey,” said Mama. “Better be glad to get them.”

  “We’ve got to look on the map and see each town we’re coming to, and go to the post office when we get there,” said Milly.

  “Did you order me a new dress, Mama?” asked Patsy.

  “No,” said Mama. “Shorts and T-shirts are good enough on the river. Nobody looks at river kids anyhow. You can wear Milly’s old ones to town.”

  Milly happened to look up and see some pilings go past the window.

  “Where’s Daddy goin’?” she asked. “Is he fixin’ to tie up?”

  She ran out quickly.

  Pile dikes were wide-spaced fences of heavy posts called “piling” driven out in the river. They were used by the U. S. Army Engineers to control the river’s course. In some places they lined the banks like the teeth of a comb. They could be dangerous for a small boat pushed against them by a stiff current. But Daddy sometimes tied his big outfit to them for a short stop.

  The water was slapping up against the hull. A lively current was passing on the chute side.

  “What’s Daddy going over to the pilings for?” asked Patsy.

  “Daddy knows what he’s doing,” said Mama. “He’s in the channel. He’s going by the channel marks. He’s lived on the river long enough to…”

  But that time, Abe Foster made a mistake.

  Suddenly there was a terrible jolt, followed by a long-drawn-out grating and grinding. The mail-order catalogue was knocked off the table and dishes were thrown out of cupboards. Mama nearly fell off her chair and Patsy landed plunk on the floor, with a broken plate in her hand. Bunny came staggering in with a bump on her head. Dan began to scream.

  “A sand bar!” Milly shouted from the front porch. “We’re on a sand bar!”

  Nobody needed to tell Daddy or Mama either. Even the children knew it, down to little Bunny, They all went out to see. Daddy was furious.

  “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 stretc
hing 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.

  CHAPTER V

  Still on the River

  “NONE 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.”