River Queen

by Gilbert, Morris

  “Then if you put some tomato catsup on my ham sandwich, that would be good.”

  “All right, be back in a minute.” Julienne went into the galley and made what, to her, was a disgusting sandwich.

  When she returned to where Carley sat, she saw that Jesse Allgood had come out on deck and was squatting down beside her. When Julienne walked up, he jumped to his feet. “Good evenin’, Miss Ashby. I was just talking to Carley about fishing.”

  Julienne took her seat beside Carley again and handed her the sandwich. “It’s fine, Jesse. Maybe you have some fishing tips for her?”

  Carley said, “I was telling him that I’m using chicken liver for bait. Darcy said it might be good to catch catfish with. But I’m not catching anything.”

  Jesse said, “That there’s good bait, but you’re fishing at the wrong time, Miss Carley. You gotta fish nights for catfish.”

  “At night? Don’t they sleep at night?”

  “No, they eat at night. And the best way to catch a whole mess of ’em is to use throw lines.”

  “What’s a throw line?”

  “You tie a hook on the end of a line. You tie something heavy to make it sink, then you cut off a piece of it for a long tail end. It sinks down to the bottom. Pretty soon old mister catfish, he come around. He grabs it. You see your line jerking around, and you grab hold, and you pulls it in.”

  “Will you show me how, Jesse?”

  “I surely will, Miss Carley. But best time for catfishing is around midnight. You’re gonna have to ask your mama if you can stay up that late.”

  Carley turned to look appealingly up at Julienne. “Can I please, Julienne? If you say I can, Mama won’t care. Please?”

  Julienne smiled. “You know what, that sounds like a lot of fun. How about if we both let Jesse teach us how to fish for catfish about midnight tonight?”

  Carley’s big blue eyes widened. “You mean it? You’ll fish with us?”

  “I mean it,” Julienne said, rising. “I’m going to go right now and finish up my work so I can rest some this afternoon. And you need to rest too, Carley. Finish eating, wash up, and go take a nap. Okay?”

  “Sure!” she said, yanking her pole out of the water and hopping up. “I’m going to go into the galley and get a pickle. A pickle would be good with this sandwich. Oh, boy, we’re going to have so much fun! And maybe we’ll catch lots and lots of catfish.”

  “We will,” Jesse promised. “You just wait and see.” He took her fishing pole and went back through the main deck doors, and Carley scampered up the stairs.

  Julienne was about to follow her, but then she saw Dallas coming up the gangplank and went to meet him. She noted that he had on his best clothes, a black frock coat, a white linen shirt with a high collar, a black tie, black-ironed trousers, and a black felt slouch hat. It was a warm day, and as she joined him he touched the brim, then took it off and wiped his brow.

  “Hello, Mr. Bronte,” she said. “Rather warm today, isn’t it?”

  “Yes it is, Miss Ashby,” he said, matching her formal tone.

  Slowly they walked up to the railing on the main deck. “May I ask what’s bothering you, Mr. Bronte?” she asked hesitantly.

  Dallas looked at her. “What makes you think something’s bothering me?”

  “You don’t keep your thoughts secret very well. Your face gives you away.”

  “I guess that’s why I lose money at poker,” he said glumly. “I’ve been to everyone I can think of on this river, but I haven’t been able to find us any freight.”

  “You mean no one needs anything hauled right now?” Julienne asked with surprise.

  A slight breeze stirred one of the damp thick curls on his forehead and he lifted his head as if to welcome it. Then he replied distantly, “No, it’s because of me, Miss Ashby. They don’t trust me because of my reputation.”

  “But that all happened over a year ago, didn’t it? Surely all that scandal is old news. And you didn’t lose your pilot’s license.”

  He said bitterly, “But everyone thinks I’m a drunk. Nobody wants to trust a drunk.”

  “Oh, I see,” Julienne said faintly.

  Wearily he said, “Maybe I should go get Carley to pray for me. She thinks God will do anything for her.”

  “No, don’t stir her up now, I just talked her into taking a nap,” Julienne said hastily. “Apparently Jesse has special secret knowledge about catching catfish, so we’re going fishing at midnight tonight. That’s the only reason Carley agreed to take a nap.”

  “‘We’?” Dallas repeated with surprise, staring down at her. “Don’t tell me you’re going to go fishing?”

  “I certainly am. Why shouldn’t I?” Julienne said with a hint of temper.

  “You just never struck me as a fishing kind of girl,” Dallas said, his eyes alight. “In fact, you never struck me as a doing-anything-outdoors-kind of girl. But anyway, do you suppose I could wrangle an invitation to this fishing party?”

  “Of course,” Julienne said with only the tiniest hint of stiffness. “I’m sure Carley would love for you to fish with us.”

  “Carley would, huh,” he repeated under his breath, then turned to go through the main deck doors. “See you at midnight, ma’am,” he said. “Betcha I catch more fish than you, Miss Ashby.”

  “You most certainly will not!” she called after him.

  “Bet I will,” she heard him say just before he passed through the doors.

  Realizing she would have to shout to answer him, and ladies never raised their voices in public, Julienne was content to say to herself, “Bet you won’t. And you just wait, Mr. Bronte. I’ll get the River Queen some freight!”

  AT MIDNIGHT THE WIND was moaning softly over the waters of the Mississippi, and the small laps against the side of the River Queen made a sibilant sound. Dallas, Julienne, Jesse, and Carley sat along the back of the main deck, their legs dangling. All of them were barefoot. It had taken a lot of persuasion for Julienne to remove her shoes, but at last she had done it and had been pleasantly surprised at how good dunking her feet in the tepid water felt. Several throw lines were strung out by each of them, and they had been sitting there for several minutes.

  “What’ll we do now?” Carley asked.

  “Why, we don’t do nothing but sit and wait,” Jesse answered.

  “Tell me about the biggest fish you ever caught, Jesse.”

  The others listened as Jesse talked about a mammoth catfish he had caught once, and even as he spoke, one of the lines close to Carley began to twitch. “You got something there, Miss Carley,” Jesse said. “Grab that line!”

  Carley let out a yelp and grabbed the line. She pulled at it and said, “Blatherskite, he’s heavy! He must be a whale!”

  The grown people watched her, smiling at her excitement. She tugged and tugged at the line, and finally Jesse had to help her. They pulled a big fat catfish. “How much do you think it weighs, Jesse?” Carley asked, her eyes shining.

  “’Bout a ten-pounder, I’d reckon.”

  “I knew it! I prayed and asked God if He would send me a ten-pound catfish. See, Dallas? All you have to do is ask!” she said with elation.

  “Wish it were that easy,” Dallas murmured.

  The fish bit well that night. They wound up with some half dozen good-sized fish. Jesse was going to clean and fillet them, and Julienne knew that Carley was so wound up she probably wouldn’t sleep for hours, so she let her stay with Jesse. She and Dallas started walking along the deck.

  Dallas looked up at the indigo sky, where they could see the Milky Way so clearly that it looked like a woman’s spangled veil above their heads. In a low voice he said, “You know, I keep a little room, a special little room, in the back of my mind. I put all the good things in there. When I’m feeling low, I go in there and I
sort of go through them all.”

  “What do you mean?” Julienne asked curiously.

  “I always thought it might be like how a lady goes through a box of her jewelry. She picks up those jewels, feels of them, admires them, remembers the times she’s worn them. And that’s what I do with the things in that room. I slowly go over them, savor them all again. And this night is one of those things that I’m going to put in that room. Watching Carley pulling that catfish in.”

  It was a tender side of Dallas Bronte that Julienne had never seen. “I don’t have a room like that,” she said lightly. “But maybe I should.”

  He nodded but his voice was far away. “I need all those good things, times like this. It’s a comfort, somehow.”

  He sounded very lonely, and on impulse Julienne laid her hand lightly on his sleeve. He looked down at her with surprise. She smiled and said, “Please don’t worry, Mr. Bronte. We’ll get some freight.”

  The hazy starlight made her look otherworldly, like a nymph floating by in a dark forest. He swallowed hard, and said, “Thank you, Miss Ashby. Thank you for giving me this chance. I won’t let you down.”

  “You never have, Dallas,” she said, then turned and slipped away.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Julienne thought that she had never been so frustrated in her entire life. Gritting her teeth, she stood on Carley’s little chair, the one that Tyla had given her. Pushing the tin bracket against the wall, just one inch to the left of the window, she took a small nail out of her mouth, stuck it in the hole at the bottom of the bracket, and tried to push it hard enough to stick in position, but she couldn’t do it. Grunting, she held the bracket with her pinky, ring, and middle fingers, pinched the nail with her forefinger and thumb, and banged the hammer against the head of the nail. It ricocheted across the room, she hit her forefinger, and jumped so hard she almost fell off the chair. “Blatherskite!” she muttered, Carley’s current favorite word.

  Caesar appeared at her stateroom door and stared at her with reproach. “Miss Julienne, you ought not be doing that! Any of the crew would do that for you, or I will!”

  “No,” Julienne said moodily. “You all have enough to do, too much. I can learn how to put up a curtain rod and hang a curtain, I’m not an idiot.” At one time the River Queen staterooms had had curtain rods mounted, for the nail holes were still there. Dallas had told her that they had probably been brass and had long ago been looted. He had found six sets of brackets and rods in one of the junk shops, and Julienne was determined to replace the canvas they had tacked up against the windows with cotton curtains.

  Caesar had opened his mouth to argue with her, but she brightened and asked, “Is that the mail?”

  “Yes’m, it’s why I’m here. But Miss Julienne, if you’d just let me—”

  “No, Caesar, thank you, but I’ve made up my mind to hang our curtains. Thank you for bringing the mail,” she said, hungrily taking the envelopes from his hand. Defeated, he left.

  Julienne saw Felicia Moak’s flowery script and eagerly tore it open as she sat on her bed. As she read the half-note, her face slowly changed from eager expectation to perplexity, and then she grew very somber. Laying it aside slowly, she picked up another letter, saw the return address, and opened it. This letter was a full page, written in a small tidy script. When she finished the letter she looked up, out her broken stateroom window. All she could see was the steamer that was next to them, a cheap, gaudy packet. After long moments tears started rolling down her cheeks. Vaguely she thought, I haven’t cried since Papa’s funeral . . .

  She didn’t know how long she sat there, feeling the hot tears rolling down her face, staring blankly out the window. She started when she heard a voice at her door. Caesar had left it open.

  “Julienne, your mother and I were wondering if there might be some way that Mr. Bronte could—Oh, Julienne! What’s wrong, dear?” Aunt Leah hurried to sit by Julienne and put her arm around her. Taking a handkerchief out of her pocket, she softly wiped Julienne’s face. “Please tell me, dearest, let me help you,” she said softly.

  “Oh, Aunt Leah, I’ve been such a fool! Such a stupid, proud, shameful fool!” she said bitterly, taking Leah’s handkerchief and scrubbing her face harshly.

  “Everyone on this earth is, at some time or another,” Leah said calmly. “But please tell me what’s affecting you this way so suddenly, Julienne. I had thought that you seemed to be dealing with our situation better, especially since the Queen is on the river again.”

  “I had been doing better, but it’s not just because of that. I think—I think, Aunt Leah, that in the back of my mind I just thought that this was just a temporary thing, just an event that would soon be over, and we could go back to our lives again. I know that sounds stupid, but I wasn’t really thinking that way. I guess you could just say I was feeling that way.”

  “I understand,” Leah said. “And that’s not stupid, Julienne. After you receive a deep shock, it often takes a long time before we really see things, and comprehend things, clearly.”

  “Maybe. But that’s not all. I really thought that my old life was right there, just waiting for me to pick it up again,” she said bitterly. “But I was wrong. I was wrong about so many things.

  “Yesterday, when Mr. Bronte came back and he hadn’t been able to find any freight, I felt so superior to him. I thought, with my friends and contacts, I’ll be able to ask their help to find work for the Queen. So—so I sent a note to Felicia Moak, telling her that I would call on her today. I was sure that Mr. Moak would be able to recommend us to haul freight to any number of people. Anyway, this is the note I got back.” She thrust the pink scented half-note into Leah’s hands.

  Leah scanned it quickly and looked up. “I hate to say this, Julienne, but I’m not at all surprised. At any time, didn’t you wonder that the Moaks haven’t called on us, or at least written us?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Julienne answered bitterly. “I just told myself that we were in mourning—supposedly, though we’ve been working like field hands—and that of course they wouldn’t call on us here. But it’s been over a month since Papa died, so I thought that that was a suitable mourning period, and they would welcome a call from me. That is honestly how stupid I was.”

  “Stop saying that, Julienne, you are not a stupid woman. This was just a blindness on your part, and that is not unforgivable, under the circumstances. You and Felicia have been friends for, what? Fifteen years?”

  “Not friends, obviously,” Julienne said shortly. Some of the color was coming back into her cheeks and the tears had stopped.

  “I do have a question,” Leah said in a lighter tone. “She says that she couldn’t join you on your ride today? What did you mean by that?”

  “When I got this idea, I realized, of course, that since we don’t have a buggy or carriage any more, I had no way to call up in Natchez. So I asked Caesar about renting a buggy, but he told me that the only thing you can rent in Natchez-Under-the-Hill is a freight cart with a driver and a mule. Well, I thought that it might not be appropriate for me to ride in a mule cart to call on the Moaks,” she said with a straight face, and stopped, because Leah had begun to laugh.

  In a moment she continued, “And besides, a mule cart costs fifty cents, and I don’t have fifty cents. So I asked Ring if he knew of anyone that had a saddle horse I might borrow for an hour or two, and he did. So I wrote Felicia that I was going riding and asked her to join me.”

  Still smiling, Leah said, “It’s probably a good thing they’re leaving town, and she couldn’t go with you. Felicia rides like a flour sack, she always did.”

  “Leaving town, I’m sure you believe that as much as I do,” Julienne rasped, picking up the note again and reading: “‘And I’m so utterly sorry, dear Julienne, but we are all going to be gone for an undetermined period of time, so I’m afraid if you should chance to
call we likely will not be at home.’ Never at home, to me, I guess.”

  “I’m sorry you’ve been so hurt, my dear,” Leah said sympathetically. “It’s a sad thing to learn, but people are weak, and they will let you down.”

  Except Dallas flitted through Julienne’s mind like a bright butterfly, and she managed a mischievous smile. “Well, you’ve had the bad news, Aunt Leah. Now for the good news. Archie-Bald Leggett wouldn’t marry me if I was the only woman left in America.” She waved his letter.

  “Oh, Julienne, please do not tell me that you were crying because of him,” she said disdainfully. “You weren’t going to marry that silly little man anyway.”

  “I don’t know, the thought has crossed my mind a few times in the last weeks. Don’t look at me that way, Aunt Leah, I’m baring my ugly dark soul. There were times that I thought that if I married him it might at least mean the end of our money troubles. And we would have a nice home. You know, he kept calling on me even after Papa died. Since his father was on the Board of Directors of the bank, he must have known that this was going to happen, that we were really poor, but he did call and he seemed to be just as ardent as ever. I know he hasn’t called down here, but as I told you, somehow I excused all of that, thinking that we would be back to our lives soon, and everything would be like it used to be.”

  Leah’s mouth tightened. “My dear Julienne, if you think that Archie Leggett would have provided a nice home for your mother, for Carley, for Darcy, and particularly for me, you really have been doing a magnificent job of blinding yourself, and also of making yourself utterly deaf. He would have a nice home, and you as his wife would share it, but there is not a chance he would have lifted a finger to help any of us.

  “And as for him calling on you and pressing his suit after your father died, I think I know why,” she said shrewdly. “I would imagine that Preston Gates was exerting all the pressure he could on the Board to turn the mortgage on Ashby Plantation over to the family, and I’ll bet Archie’s father was doing the same. Don’t you see? Instead of leaving everything to Darcy, Charles left everything to Roseann. So whoever controls her controls the plantation. If he had married you, he would definitely have had control over our family.