The River Queen

by Mary Morris

  “Well, while I was waiting for Mr. Seymour to take my picture, I was chatting with his girl and I asked her how much it would cost me to have three pictures taken and she said, ‘Oh, three pictures, that would be fifteen dollars.’ Well, that sounded okay to me so I told him to go ahead and take my picture. So Mr. Seymour, he smooths down my hair and hands me a pipe. I never smoked a pipe, but I’m holding it in the portrait. He takes my picture for fifteen, twenty minutes, then I leave. About a week later he sends me the proofs and I pick out the one picture.”

  “The one that’s hanging on my wall.”

  “That’s right. So, anyway, I order three copies of the picture and send him the fifteen dollars and a few days later Mr. Seymour calls me up. He’s yelling and screaming. ‘What’s this fifteen dollars? These pictures cost more like a hundred and fifty dollars.’ Anyway, Mr. Seymour goes on, blah blah blah, but I tell him talk to your girl. She told me fifteen dollars and fifteen dollars it is. So eventually he agreed and that’s how I got the portrait for fifteen instead of a hundred and fifty.”

  “What happened to the pictures?”

  “Well, you have one, that’s the one I kept. My mother had one. And I sent one to the girl.”

  “And what happened to that one?”

  “Oh, she probably tore it up. I don’t know.” He took the last bite of his breakfast. He’d cleaned his plate. “I never heard from her again. I wasn’t going to marry her, anyway. I was a confirmed bachelor then. I shoulda stayed that way. Believe me.” He tapped my hand. “Of course, I wouldn’t have had you.” My father shook his head. “I wish I could remember her first name. I think I broke her heart.”

  31

  “AFTER ALL these years I can picture that old time to myself now, just as it was then,” Mark Twain writes in one of the most nostalgic passages in American literature, “the white town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer’s morning, the streets empty, or pretty nearly so.” He was writing of Hannibal, his boyhood home. It had briefly been my father’s home as well. Now we are, after ten days on the river, approaching.

  Pulling into the small marina, Jerry manages to find the only slip to tie up to in the whole town. As he maneuvers the boat into the narrow passage for the marina, he’s shaking his head. “This is literally the only place. If we hadn’t found this spot,” Jerry says, “we’d be spending the night somewhere else.” He seems proud of himself.

  I’m heading to a hotel for the night. I decided to do this long ago, but now I really want to. I am ready for land, running water, clean sheets. There is much fanfare as I leave, the boys giving me shouts and a big wave. “Adios, amigo!” they cry. “Hasta la vista!” as I trudge uphill, backpack bouncing on my back, then hang a left.

  I come to Main Street—an avenue of souvenir shops, filled with Huck and Tom T-shirts, Mark Twain playing cards, statues of Tom and Huck, a bookstore that apparently only sells books by and about Mark Twain. The last run of the Hannibal trolley drives by and weary tourists wave. At the Becky Thatcher Restaurant a Tom & Huck’s Taxi offers me a ride. I decline and instead dial the visitor’s center, as a sign instructs, TOLL FREE 1-800-TOM-AND-HUCK, to ask about a hotel, but the tourist office is closed.

  Ahead of me I see a big sign—the Hotel Clemens, of course—and I make my way there. In the entrance a giant cardboard cutout of Mark Twain greets me. For a moment I think it’s real. Block letters read HEAR MARK TWAIN HIMSELF, LIVE, AT PLANTER’S THEATER.

  Wow, they even channel him here.

  I’d dreamed of Hannibal all my life. It was the stuff of my father’s stories and of the books I read. But as I plodded in the heat of a late summer’s afternoon toward my hotel, what greeted me was a theme park. I’ve come to a place of tacky souvenir shops and cardboard cutouts, of fake “real live” shows and tourist choo choo trains. Disneyland on the Mississippi.

  I’m considering turning around and heading back to the boat, but I’m sure the boys already have the satellite dish going. And I am longing for a bed that doesn’t roll and a hot meal that doesn’t include pizza crust. But the truth is Hannibal is awful. And it is obsessed, literally obsessed, with its prodigal son (who left when he was a young man and only returned sporadically to revisit his boyhood haunts, to reclaim his river, and for photo opportunities). If I lived here, I’d go mad. Already I feel like someone trapped in the fun house mirrors.

  My guess is that at some point Hannibal, not wanting to become a washed-up town like Muscatine, with its pearl button factories closing, or casino-dependent like Dubuque, saw that it had one card to play and it played it well. But how many copies of Huckleberry Finn can one town handle? How many ice-cream parlors and postcard shops and souvenirs and T-shirts all with Mark Twain or some version of his famous characters (with the startling exception of the runaway slave, Jim) printed or emblazoned or in neon signs can one small sleepy river hamlet have? The answer is apparently thousands.

  My innkeeper is a dour man whose family originated in Fiji and, for reasons he cannot explain to me, has landed here. Circumstances, he says. There is a long, complicated story that involves broken marriages and children scattered in cities throughout the Midwest. I’m getting more and more depressed when he asks to see my driver’s license. He gazes at it and says, “Hey, your Yanks sure blew it, didn’t they? They had a chance and they blew it.”

  I’m not quick on the draw here and think we are talking Civil War, but apparently he is a Yankees fan as in baseball and was disappointed in last year’s World Series. I feel like sharing so I tell him that in fact I was rooting for the Red Sox and he gives me a look of disbelief that borders on disdain, then turns away, punches in some numbers, and hands me my key.

  The hotel, which is several stories high and built around a gigantic atrium, seems deserted. An enormous Jacuzzi bubbles in the center of it. All of the rooms have large picture windows. Privacy is achieved with thick, dark curtains. As I take the glass elevator up to four, I think that this could be a very good setting for a horror film. But inside my room is cozy with big beds, clean, but scratchy, definitely not cotton sheets, and, most important for my purposes, a shower.

  I shower like someone who doesn’t know where her next shower is coming from, which I don’t. Then I get dressed and flip through the guest directory for some dining suggestions. I decide to pass on Huck’s Homestead Restaurant, which is right across the street, has lots of fluorescent lighting, and specializes in roast beef.

  For my big night out I want more refined fare. When I ask the desk clerk for a recommendation, he says Lula Belle’s. Located on Bird Street (the perfect name, it turns out), Lula Belle’s is a former house of ill repute turned fine dining establishment, and I stroll there, a woman of leisure for the time being, under the violet sky of a warm summer’s night.

  In the entryway a pair of bloomers in a Lucite frame greets me. I am led into the main dining room, which is virtually empty, and realize I am the youngest person in the place by about thirty years. The maître d’ tries to seat me at a tiny table for two, but I beg for a bigger one. Disgruntled, she seats me at a larger table for four and I thank her. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me,” I say.

  Without a word she hands me a menu and I must admit I haven’t seen so much attitude since I left New York. It’s rather comforting. But I’m a little afraid of her too and decide not to ask what her favorite things are on the menu. I’ll do it on my own. I’m going to pass on the “Awesome Blossom,” which is a fried onion, the Missouri equivalent of the Texas Rose. And I know I’m not going to have the Bordello Bombe for dessert. I order a simple New York strip steak, medium rare, fries, and creamed spinach. A glass of cabernet. Comfort food. I am in heaven. For about five minutes, that is.

  As I sit, I watch the others eat in a kind of culinary slow-motion silence. No one is speaking. In this dim-lit room, candles flickering, the voice of Dean Martin croons, “See the marketplace in old Algiers. Send me photographs and souvenirs.…” “Just remember ’til you’re home again/Y
ou belong to me,” I sing to myself, completing the lines. I must have made a little noise because an elderly woman, sitting at the next table, gives me a glare. The old loneliness creeps up on me. I hate eating alone and want to ask one of the old couples nearby if they’ll adopt me.

  I get up and wander around. Apparently Lula Belle’s also runs a kind of bed and breakfast and one can partake of Belle’s River Heritage Collection. Upstairs there’s a Safari Room where you can let your inner tiger roam. There’s the Renaissance Suite, good for wenches of all kinds, and over on Mark Twain Lake a private house can be had, for family reunions, I assume.

  I’m envisioning myself a lady of the evening now in corset and bloomers, leading my wildebeest of a man into our safari room suite. I see a short whip, pith helmet. Lion tamer gear. Next I’m in red vinyl and fishnet hose. But again my vision grows gloomy as I think of all the women who have come to the end of their dreams in these rooms. Everything is less funny than it was. This restaurant oozes sadness from its floorboards. I miss my husband, but my thoughts drift to Tom and Jerry.

  I picture them, with their feet up on my worktable, having chili and beans out of a can. The moon overhead, the river lapping at the hull. Samantha Jean licking bowls clean. I see them bedding down for the night. Jerry sipping a beer and Tom his diet Dew. Samantha Jean doing her big leap into Daddy’s arms. I contemplate surprising them and returning to the boat.

  The waiter signals that my steak is ready. Dutifully I sit down to eat, but my appetite is gone. The steak is, shall we say, not Peter Luger’s, but I love the creamed spinach and am happy for real food. I walk back to the Hotel Clemens in darkness and all of Hannibal is shut down.

  That night, as is often the case with me, I can’t sleep. Or that is, I can sleep, but I wake up at three or four, not sure of what I want to do. I ponder taking something from my drug kit, but decide not to. I want to get an early start in the morning and this would just slow me down.

  Since I have a television at my disposal, I check out the menu and find an educational program on the early discoverers. The program begins with a premise that has already been preoccupying me. Why do mining towns and river towns become ghost towns?

  It is a show on Lewis and Clark and their journey up the Missouri. What is the frontier? the program asks. And the definition: The frontier is opportunity in the form of property. Property, the narrator goes on to explain, was a European notion, invented by white men. The native peoples had no sense of property. To them the world belonged to all.

  The frontier kept moving. For a time it was in upstate New York, it was the Alleghenies, it was Tennessee. It was the Mississippi. And then when John Charles Frémont introduced the notion of Manifest Destiny—the idea of taking the land and turning it into a profit-making business—it became the whole of the West.

  I am engrossed in the program and it goes on for at least an hour, but when it ends I still can’t get to sleep. It is the middle of the night and I want ice. I slip out of my room in my T-shirt and yoga pants with my ice bucket. The hotel is eerily quiet. Its atrium opens on the empty lobby, lined with plastic potted palms and plants. A weird gurgling noise comes from the Jacuzzi. I find the machine on my floor and push the button. The sound of ice dropping into the bucket reverberates throughout the atrium like cannon fire.

  I expect guests to shoot out of their rooms, prepared to evacuate, but no one stirs. I tiptoe back into my room, make myself a glass of cold water, and try to sleep.

  32

  SOMEHOW THE Hotel Clemens is less creepy by day than it was by night. People actually seem to inhabit its rooms and they have filed in to, what else?, the Tom Sawyer Dining Room for a breakfast of cold cereal, toast, juices, and very watery, but better than what I’ve been consuming, coffee. It is true they all have bluish hair and wear pastel pantsuits, but it’s human life and I’m glad to be among the living.

  I take a table beside two elderly gentlemen, brothers it turns out, who are dressed in plaid shirts, pants with suspenders. They look like well-dressed farmers and they are deeply engrossed in the Hannibal visitor’s guide. I hear one say, “Oh, the Gilded Cage. Now what do you think that is?”

  The other shakes his head. Then spells out a word. “D-I-O-R-A-M-A. Never heard that word before,” the older one says.

  They are quiet for a few minutes, then I see they are open to a certain page of the brochure and completely engrossed. Given that I have the same visitor’s guide in my pack, I take it out as well. I peruse the entries to see what has captured their eye as I wait for my English muffin to toast.

  I breeze by Mark Twain’s boyhood home, boyhood home gift shop, Huckleberry Finn House, Becky Thatcher Home, J. M. Clemens Law Office, Mark Twain Museum, Mark Twain Cave Complex, Mark Twain Riverboat, Richard Garey’s Mark Twain himself, Twainland Express Sightseeing Tours, Sawyer’s Creek Fun Park, Mark Twain Clopper, Tom Sawyer Diorama Museum, Tom and Huck Statue, Tom and Becky Appearances. But none of this has interested these dapper gentlemen.

  They are very focused on the last page of the visitor’s guide. A page called “Area Agri-Tourism.” There is a photograph of a dozen or so cows’ behinds, taken in such a way that leaves nothing to the imagination. These cows are being milked on a cow-carousel. “Don’t know how they got them up on there,” the older man with the white hair says.

  “Must use some kind of a step-up ladder,” the other replies.

  “Well, takes time to get a cow to step up on a stool,” the older one says.

  Perhaps it’s waiting for my muffin or the overwhelming feeling of needing a real moment that doesn’t involve fictional characters, but I turn to these gentlemen. “I was wondering about this picture as well…” Actually I was wondering why the tourist office would put in such an explicit shot of the private parts of its dairy industry in its tourist paraphernalia, but these guys weren’t fazed.

  “Yeah, we always milked them in their stalls by hand. And they knew their stalls, let me tell you,” the white-haired gentleman said. “Cow always knows her stall.”

  “This looks pretty complicated to me,” the other brother says. “Cow’s gotta get up on a platform. Probably doesn’t even know where she’s going.”

  “You know, our daddy was a dairy farmer and we’ve moved a lot of cows in my day. Our daddy gave up the business when I was still a boy, but he made a success of himself in everything he did.”

  “Is that so…?”

  “He opened a store and made a success with that. He started a farm equipment business and he made a success of that too.”

  The other brother nods. “That’s right. Whatever Daddy did, he did it right.” Though they are well into their sixties, I see the sadness in their eyes.

  On the Muzak, Dolly Parton is singing “Those were the good old days, but I don’t care to go back.…”

  My muffin has popped up and I go to butter it just as the two men get up to leave. “Well, it was nice talking to you,” I tell them.

  “Sure nice talking to you too,” they say.

  * * *

  In 217 B.C. Hannibal, the Carthaginian general, set out across the Apennines to conquer Rome. Hannibal and his men raped and pillaged for years, laying waste to town after town, during what came to be known as the Second Punic War, but he never managed to subjugate Rome. As I head out after breakfast, I stop at the visitor’s center to inquire what connection might exist between the general and the town.

  Several women are working at the desk, but no one is sure if or why Hannibal was named after this particular general. They are all shaking their beehived hair. “There is a town named Carthage nearby,” one of them says. It appeared that no one had ever asked this question before. One of them gets a big reference book and looks it up. She relays to me that there is no relation to the general, but there is a Hannibal Creek.

  As I’m leaving the visitor’s center, the Twainland Express chugs past me with tourists sitting in the diminutive cars, chins on their knees. As I stroll through downtown Hannibal, I’ve
lightened my load and only carry a small day pack and my journal. Passing the local fire station I see I’ve missed the ham-and-bean dinner at the Methodist church two weeks ago. I descend toward the river where I come to a store that offers INTERNET CAFÉ AND CHRISTIAN GIFTS. But it is closed. I peer inside and see a strange array of Bibles, statues of Mary and Jesus, and computer stations.

  Looking up, I realize that I am at the base of Cardiff Hill and begin to climb. It is a hot morning and my pack, though light, weighs me down as I make my way up the many concrete steps of the famed hill where Huck and Tom purportedly played. Twain’s father died when he was eleven and the truth is all of his best stories come from his childhood. It is as if he was stuck at this moment and when he had exhausted all his childhood memories, he had little left of great importance to say. At the top of Cardiff Hill, I pause. From here I have a vista of the town and the river, which, as my father described it for me, I can see across.

  For Twain the river was the source of all stories—of Tom and Huck and Jim, of lost boys and miserable slaves, of imprisonment and, ultimately, freedom. Twain learned the river and tried to navigate it. He took his pen name from his riverboating experiences, and the river stayed with him long after he’d moved from its banks. He never became a very good steamboatman, but his love of the river permeates his best work.

  In his memoir he writes of “the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun; the dense forest away on the other side, the ‘point’ above the town, and the ‘point’ below, bounding the river-glimpse and turning it into a sort of sea, and withal a very still and brilliant and lonely one.” And in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck describes sunrise on the river before him: “Then the river softened up, away off, and warn’t black anymore, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along—ever so far away … then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh, and sweet to smell.” I wonder if this was the vantage point my father saw. If he climbed this hill himself, perhaps with a girl. For it is a romantic spot. If he stood here and felt the cool river breezes upon his face. But somehow I don’t feel his presence. My father seems far away from this town of tourist attractions and T-shirts.