The River Queen

by Mary Morris

“I’ve been having trouble finding those old coins as well,” the man booms. “Everywhere I go, I look for them, but silver is getting scarcer and scarcer.”

  I pick out a few postcards of Muscatine from the 1930s and, as I go pay for them, I ask the owner if she knows where I can get a cup of coffee in town.

  She shakes her head. She’s sporting a tattered pink sweater and has cropped orangish hair. Probably younger than me, but looks a lot older. She keeps swatting her own back with the flyswatter. “Can’t get any coffee in this part of town. You gotta go down to the malls for that.”

  “Well, I don’t have a car. Can I walk there?”

  She looks at me like I’m crazy. “You don’t have a car? How’re you getting around without a car?”

  “I’m on a boat, actually.”

  I may as well have told her that I was traveling by intergalactic spaceship. “You don’t have a car?” She’s shaking her head. “No way to get to the malls without a car. There’s no busses, no cabs.… You have to have a car or you can’t get a cup of coffee in this town.” She introduces herself as Cindy. “You know, back in the 1970s Muscatine was a booming town. There was a lot going on here. Good restaurants, things to do. Then they built the malls. That just killed the downtown. There’s nothing here anymore,” Cindy says with a wave of her flyswatter. “You can’t buy groceries. You can’t get toothpaste. You gotta drive to the malls. It’s a conspiracy if you ask me.”

  “A conspiracy?”

  “Yeah, between the chains and the auto industry. I wouldn’t put it past them.” She swats a fly on the counter, then swats herself again. “And there’s no public transportation here. No taxis. If you’re working second or third shift in the factory, you can’t get home without a car.” She’s still whipping herself with her own flyswatter as if in an act of self-flagellation. “Look at this downtown. There’s no restaurants. No cafés. You can’t get a loaf of bread or a cup of coffee here. Nothing. The malls ruined all of that. And the cars. They spent eight million dollars on riverfront restoration. Eight million. And what’ve we got? A nice place to take a walk. That’s all.”

  Later I will learn something from my husband, who is Canadian. Apparently films that are supposed to take place in the river towns of Middle America (the “fly over” states) are shot in Canada. For example, a film that is supposed to take place in Kansas City is being shot in Winnipeg. This is because Winnipeg looks more like what Americans think river towns should look like—bustling centers of commerce and vitality, not dead centers where nothing happens outside of its strip malls—than Kansas City itself does.

  I pay for my postcards and leave. On my way back to the boat, I pass another pawnshop. It too specializes in guitars.

  * * *

  One day, while driving around the Midwest, my father and his brother, Sidney, got an idea. World War II had just ended and my father had gone back to Chicago from Pennsylvania, where he’d been working in the war industry. He had come to run his baby brother’s architectural firm. I picture the day. A warm day of Illinois summer. The fields flat, the corn just starting to grow.

  They looked at all this vastness and open space and an idea came to them almost simultaneously. What if we put all the stores in one location, they thought, instead of having them scattered all over the place or just on Main Street? What if you drive to these stores? With the war over, the economy was chugging along. So they began building the first shopping centers all over the Midwest. Elgin, Illinois; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Terre Haute, Indiana.

  The buildings they built were precursors to the generic Home Depot or Costco boxes we have today. Charmless, depersonalized malls that began the depletion of Main Street and the downtowns. But then, in the 1940s and 1950s, it was all America wanted, and my father and his brother did well for a time. For two summers I worked in his office and I’d gaze at the sketches and models—the plastic trees, the fake families, the cookie-cutter stores. When he wanted to take me on an outing, we would go to a building or a mall under construction. I’d get a hard hat and we’d walk around, usually with an engineer and a set of plans. My father would say things like, “Let’s put dressing rooms in the back” or, “Can’t we open up those walls?” He seemed happiest walking along the wooden planks of sawdust-strewn floors.

  My father had many dreams. One was to be a rich man, which he was for a while. And then he wasn’t. He watched his wealth evaporate in bad deals, lavish spending, and taxes on property sold. In some ways he died impoverished. In his final years, when my parents moved to Milwaukee to be near my brother, my father would dissuade his Chicago friends from driving up to see him. He was embarrassed at his fall from grace.

  He had other dreams—those he’d put aside. To be a musician, to “angel” Broadway shows. When I visited him in the last year, we’d watch television, which he couldn’t hear. Or we’d sit and gaze at the squirrels building their nests. He marveled at how efficient they were. Other times he’d close his eyes and raise his hand and conduct Brahms or Ellington or South Pacific. He’d hum along, signaling for the trumpets to come in, for the drums to drop back. I could sit for hours watching him conduct the music he heard in his head.

  I encouraged him to work on his memoirs for a while. After all he was a man who’d seen an entire century. And besides he wanted to be remembered for something he did. That mattered to him more than anything. One Christmas I went home and read the pages he’d written. There were dozens of them, single-spaced. They told of business deals he’d done, shopping centers he’d helped design. Real estate he’d developed.

  For a man who was to me a musician and a great storyteller, these pages were incredibly dull. Devoid of imagination. I could barely read them. But perhaps most strikingly, there was no mention of my mother, my brother, or me. He even wrote about a shopping center he’d built the year I was born, but never acknowledged my birth.

  “Dad,” I said when I put the pages down. “I’m not even in here. I want to be born.”

  “You will be,” he told me with a laugh. “You will.”

  But in the pages of his memoir I never was. We never were mentioned. He talked about bricks and mortar, about deals gone bad and others that came out good. But he never spoke of me. Or my mother. Or John. It was as if we never existed at all.

  When he turned 102, he saw an item on the news. It seemed that a ferry called The Lake Express was being launched between Milwaukee and Muskegon, Michigan, and my father expressed a desire to go for a ride. I was stunned by this request. He was, after all, very old and frail, and it was a six-hour ride on what could turn out to be a cold and choppy voyage. But he was adamant.

  Given that I am married to a newshound, I made a few inquiries. Apparently the public relations people for The Lake Express liked the idea that a man who was turning 102 wanted to celebrate his birthday on their ferry. Our family was offered free tickets and we were told the press wanted to interview my dad. He dressed that day in a navy jacket, a red and white striped tie, gray flannel slacks. He wore his beige cashmere coat and a gray fedora. Nobody looked as good as my father that day. In a folder in his lap he carried a file that read “Memoir.” I think he planned to hand this to the press. Instead they asked him one or two questions and snapped his picture.

  In response to the question about why he wanted to take the ferry, he replied, “Because my arms will hurt less than if I row.” That made the headlines.

  For six hours he sat on the deck while my mother, bored and annoyed, grumbled inside. He wore a blanket draped across his legs. When the captain announced that Mr. Morris had just turned 102, Dad gave a wave at the crowd. Strangers came up and congratulated him. He was in his element. He told tales of living through two world wars, of the Great Depression. “Yeah, I remember the invention of the airplane,” he quipped with one passenger. “I predicted it would never fly.”

  But for most of those six hours he just sat, eyes on the water, staring straight ahead.

  After he died, people sent me books on the liter
ature of mourning, the nature of grief. A bereavement sampler. None of this did much good except I learned what I already knew. That grief is not a constant, the way love or anger might be. Grief is a sneakier emotion. It comes in waves, when you least expect it, sweeping across you and then it’s gone. A sudden storm that comes upon you, then subsides.

  * * *

  In the morning we gas up. Here it costs us $3.96 a gallon. With tax, for one hundred gallons, which is one hundred river miles, I get a fuel bill of four hundred dollars. Later in the year the attorney general of Illinois will charge gas stations with price gouging, but for now this is what I have to pay.

  I’m starting to do the math. At this rate, if nothing changes, the fuel costs alone of going to New Orleans from where I am right now would be over five thousand dollars. And that’s just one way. If I go with Greg Sadowski, who has suddenly surfaced in Portage Des Sioux, the place where we are headed, he’ll have to bring his boat back. No wonder the river is empty. It’s not just Katrina or the drought that’s keeping barges and pleasure craft off the river. It’s the cost of fuel.

  The truth is I can’t afford it either. As much as I want to get to Memphis and beyond, I’m starting to think that I just can’t. I’m going to need a free ride to get myself down the lower Mississippi. It comes to me that it would be perfect to have this boat take me to the end of the upper Mississippi. Then maybe I could hitch a ride south on a friendly vessel that won’t charge an arm and a leg. Or fuel costs at least. Jerry has his heart set on ending his journey at Portage Des Sioux, which is at Mile 212, and wintering the River Queen there, but I’ve gotten something else in my head. I want this boat to take me to Cairo. River Mile zero.

  With a mug of coffee in hand, I step onto the dock and take Jerry aside. “Can we talk?” I ask him.

  “Sure,” Jerry says.

  “Look, I’m figuring this thing out and I’m thinking it would be better—well, it would be better for me—if you could get me to Cairo. I mean, I know you don’t want to go past St. Louis, but I’d really like to do the upper Mississippi with you. If you could just get me to Cairo. It’s the place where Huck and Jim missed the Ohio. It’s Mile zero. The end of Illinois. Then I can figure out my way from there.…”

  Jerry’s listening, his gaze set on the river, but he doesn’t say a word.

  “I mean, would you consider…?” I am nervous, shaking as I ask. “Would you think about getting me there?”

  For a few moments he says nothing, but looks askance in a way that feels like “no.” “Not sure if I can. I’ve got to figure how many days up and back to Portage Des Sioux. Gotta figure the costs. I need to talk to Tom. And I gotta talk to Kathy.”

  “Well, would you?”

  “Well, I’ll think about it.” It’s not a flat-out no. That’s better than what I’d thought. He promises he will, but he doesn’t make a call. Later in the morning I take Tom aside.

  “So,” I tell him, “I’ve asked Jerry if he’ll keep going to Cairo.”

  Tom listens, taking this in. “So what’d he say?”

  “He said he’d think about it. Do you think he will?”

  “Hard to tell with Jerry,” he says. “Never know what he’s gonna do.” Tom gives me a slap on the arm. “I’ll work on him for you.”

  They are getting ready to push off, but I don’t think I can go another day without bathing. I try to broach this subject gently with Jerry. Perhaps there’s a way to actually hook up our shower, but apparently this will require some work and time and it also means that we’d be using precious water, which we don’t want to run out of. Maybe there’s another option. I run this by Jerry. I’m willing to find a gas station that has showers. He shakes his head. “How’re you going to get to a gas station?”

  I have no idea.

  Jerry grumbles for a moment, then talks to Tom. It appears there is some kind of a water pump that they’ve been saving for just such an occasion. Jerry tells me to go put on my bathing suit and when I come back, they’ve got this pump operating. It’s pumping river water through a hose. The river here at the dock is, well, brown, but if I want a shower, what choice do I have? As Tom pumps and Jerry holds the hose, I stand on the dock, shampooing my hair, rubbing soap under my armpits. Discreetly they look the other way.

  26

  BOGUS ISLAND, Hail Island, Bell Island, Turkey Island, Otter Island. All these islands south of Muscatine have funny names, I think, as I gaze at the maps and we journey south. My tongue burns and feels numb at the same time from the scalding it took the day before. As I’m heading outside, map in hand, I smash my foot into Jerry’s toolbox. “Goddamn it,” I say.

  Jerry looks up, startled. “Is my toolbox okay?”

  “Thanks, Jer.” Wounded and chagrined, I take my place at the bow, resting my bruised foot on an extra plastic chair. There are dozens of things to trip on or fall over on this boat. There are mooring lines and anchor lines. There are the places where we pump in and pump out and the caps that are on these, as well as the cap where the anchor line goes. I’ve stubbed my toe literally half a dozen times on this one alone and the boys laugh heartily whenever I do.

  There are three ice chests and plastic chairs, and the long stick and the short stick and firewood, and pretty much anyone’s shoes. On three occasions I have smashed my foot into the propped-up hatch above the port engine. When I complain about this, Tom says his engines need to “breathe.”

  So do I, I want to say, but I resist.

  If there is engine trouble, and there often is, I am afraid to come off the flybridge for fear of falling into the bowels of the engines themselves. And of course there is Samantha Jean, who seems to take sadistic pleasure, if a dog is capable of this emotion, in being underfoot. I have a yellow purple bruise on my thigh where I walked into the ice chest and similar bruises on all my toes. Then there are our buoys and fenders and life rings and, of course, the very anchors themselves, which, if they are not stowed, enter my worst dreams.

  There’s dampness in the air. The edges of my journal and books curl. The cabin is full of flies. My burned tongue feels numb. The banks are lined with trees whose shallow roots are exposed. More pushovers, ready with the slightest shove to tumble down. The river itself is smooth and glossy, the reflection of trees along its bank like a mirror.

  It’s a slow morning. I have phone reception so I decide to give Kate a ring. I can tell from her voice that she’s just gotten up and she’s rushing to class. “Hi, honey,” I say, “just wondering if you got that package.”

  “I haven’t even gone to the post office yet.” Her voice is filled with fatigue and some annoyance. “Look, can I call you later?”

  “Sure,” I say, “anytime.” We hang up and already I’m wishing I hadn’t called. I phone home to chat with Larry, but I get the machine. Judging by the time, he’s probably out for a run. I try to settle down at the bow while Tom has his breakfast of diet Dew and some sponge candy I picked up in East Davenport. Then he goes back up to his berth on the flybridge and cuddles with his dog. We float free through Lock and Dam 17 and hundreds of white pelicans greet us as the lock opens. “Have fun and be safe,” the lockmaster says. When Jerry sees the pelicans, he says, “Cowabunga,” and starts snapping pictures.

  On the flybridge Tom whispers sweet nothings to Samantha Jean, whom he has tucked into his sleeping bag. “Give Daddy a kiss. Come on, Sammy. Big kiss.” Meanwhile Jerry starts talking about having me go from Cairo to Memphis in a towboat. He says that I can just hop a ride. Oh great. I can’t wait for that. “I’ll make a few calls for you,” Jerry says.

  We float by a dredging barge that looks as if it landed from outer space. On the shore it’s made a huge pile of sand from the river silt it’s brought up. All along this part of the river are duck blinds. This must be a major migration route.

  We’re nearing Lock and Dam 18 and there’s a tow and barge ahead. “Looks like she’s only six hundred feet,” Jerry says. “Maybe she can take us with.” But it seems we have to
wait.

  Jerry explains that when they built the lock and dam system in the 1930s the plan was to build auxiliary locks so that smaller pleasure craft wouldn’t have to compete with commercial vessels for lockage. “Then World War II happened, and…”— he makes the hand motion he makes when a boat broaches—“that plan went down the tubes.”

  The sky darkens and the air has a hot, muggy feel. Suddenly a big storm is upon us. Lightning and thunder explode. A deluge pours down. Tom has left his sleeping bag to air out in the dinghy and in minutes it is soaking wet. He races outside and drags all his bedding into our tiny cabin to dry out along with his bomber jacket and the rest of his things, including, of course, Samantha Jean, who is also soaked to the skin. The cabin has an enclosed, musty smell, not to mention that of wet dog. Fork lightning is everywhere and I recall all the cautionary tales from my river planner as Samantha Jean freaks out and races under my bed.

  We are locked out by the barge and tow and Jerry puts the marine band radio on Channel 13 so we can hear what the towboat plans to do. I listen to an incomprehensible voice with what sounds like a thick Louisiana accent. “They’re all from the bayou,” Jerry says. “Cajuns. All them towboat drivers.”

  It appears we have some time on our hands and not much to do except sit there in the rain, so Jerry lets me maneuver the boat. Gently he shows me how to adjust the shift, which moves the boat forward and in reverse. “Lean into her,” he tells me. “You wanta make a right turn, you do the shift like this. Left, you go like this.” He shows me how if you pull the shift all the way down she’ll go into reverse.

  With rain pelting the windshield (and no wipers), I’m not having much luck. On this boat shifting is strictly a right-hand maneuver and I am a lefty. Jerry is also left-handed and I ask him if this isn’t difficult for him as well. He thinks about it for a moment. “I suppose it would be,” he wrinkles his brow, “if I hadn’t been doing it for so long.”

  “Well, I’m having a hard time.…”

  I’m struggling with the small adjustments I must make with my right hand as I turn the boat right, then left, but I can’t quite get the hang of it. I’ve long grappled with the perils of being a lefty in a right-handed world—can openers, hotel computer mouses, Metrocards for the New York City subway (which all require right-handed maneuvers). I’m definitely feeling challenged here. “Hey, Jer, what happens if I accidentally throw the shift into reverse rather than neutral?”