by H. M. Mann
“Oh no. The food was excellent.” Especially the soup. I wish I could take some to-go.
“Are you sure about this?”
“Yes sir.” I pocket the twenty. It ought to be enough for me to buy a belt, some underwear, a toothbrush, some toothpaste, maybe even a Big Mac or two.
He takes the money and tucks it into his shirt pocket. “How are you going to get back home then?”
I want to tell him that a junkie with too much money will never go home, but I can’t. “I’ll figure out something.” I see Slade below me mouthing, “Let’s go, man.”
The captain stares hard at me. “There wasn’t a canoe, was there?”
I sigh. “No.”
“Were you swimming?”
Yeah, Slade threw me in the river, but I wouldn’t call it swimming. More like sinking. “No.”
“Then how’d you get on my boat?”
I look down at my two-toned boots. “I jumped.”
“You what?”
“I jumped from the McKees Rocks Bridge in Pittsburgh.”
He blinks hard. “You were trying to kill yourself?”
“No. I was trying to save myself.”
The captain squints. “Were you being chased?”
By the biggest demon that I’ve ever known. “Yes sir.”
“What would have happened if I had contacted the authorities?” he asks.
I’d be back waiting for the “word” on Wylie right about now or back at County standing beside a window. “We wouldn’t be here in Marietta on such a pretty day.”
The captain straightens up. “And twenty dollars will be enough for you?”
“More than enough.” The less money I have on me, the better.
Slade is halfway up the stairs, and he looks worried.
“Thanks for your, uh, hospitality, Cap’n,” I say.
“Permission to go ashore, Cap’n?” Slade says once he gets to the top.
The captain looks at Slade. He’s debating something, I’m sure. “Permission granted.”
“Thank you, Cap’n, sir,” Slade says, and he cuts his eyes at me to join him.
“See you,” I say.
I walk past the captain and am halfway down the stairs when the captain calls Slade back up. “What’d you tell him?” Slade whispers.
“The truth.”
“What?”
“I told him I jumped.”
“Why’d you … ” He shakes his head. “Wait on the dock for me.”
I don’t have to wait long. Slade strides up to me with the biggest grin on his face. “You really told him you jumped.”
“Yeah. You aren’t in trouble, are you?”
“Nah. All I got was a mythology lesson about some cat named Icarus.”
“Who?”
“Don’t worry about it.” He flags down a pickup truck full of other deckhands, and we squeeze into the back.
“Where’d you get the truck?” I ask Slade as we rumble off.
Slade shrugs. “It’s always here for us. Think it belongs to the captain.”
I look behind us and see no other vehicles. “How will the captain get to town?”
The others start snickering and laughing.
“What?” I ask.
“Manny,” Slade says, “that towboat is the captain’s wife and life. He’d never leave his wife.”
The others are still laughing and carrying on.
“What’s so funny?” I ask.
“She comes to him, you understand?” Slade says. “The man hasn’t been off that boat for as long as I’ve worked for him.”
“Oh.”
“And none of us have ever seen her either.”
Slade waves a roll of money in the air, and the others stare. “We’re gonna be out a long time, fellas, thanks to Manny here.” He starts handing out twenties. “Make sure the boys up front get some.”
The road parallels the Ohio before turning what seems like north beside that other river we passed.
“That’s the Muskingum,” Slade tells me. “They say the catfish in there can weigh up to two hundred pounds.”
“Two hundred pounds?”
“Yep. I remember watching this one guy using parachute cord to catch them, I kid you not. He would take whole frozen chickens and stick them on these huge hooks, and then he’d string that parachute cord all the way across the river.”
Catching catfish … with chicken. “Ever see him bring one in?”
“Sure did, and that fish’s head was as big as your chest. Even heard a tale of a catfish eating a little dog swimmin’ in some river somewhere. Ate that dog whole. I guess a catfish will eat just about anythin’. Can you imagine that? Here, Fifi, come here boy, and then—WHAM!”
We cross a bridge over the Muskingum, and I see rowers out on the water.
“Crew team’s still practicing,” Slade says. “They must be going to nationals this year.”
“How do you know that?”
I hear more laughter. “Manny, we practically live here,” Slade says. “On the way up if we’re ahead of schedule, we stop. On the way back, we stop. Folks at the Time Out Bar know us by name.” He nods at the cab of the truck. “Two of them up there got girlfriends here, too.”
We turn off the bridge onto Front Street and head through a town with no building taller than five stories. I want to ask why, but I’m getting tired of not knowing things. I bet it has something to do with floods.
The truck screeches to a halt opposite the Time Out, a bar that looks like every other bar, I guess. Big picture window, lots of neon beer signs, cigarette butts littering the sidewalk outside, an alley running beside it. All but the driver and another guy get out, and the truck rolls away toward that steamboat I saw before. Slade and I are left standing on the sidewalk, the others streaming into the Time Out, which just happens to be open this early in the morning.
“That’s the American Queen,” Slade says. “A very nice boat. Goes all the way from here to New Orleans. I think it even starts out in Pittsburgh.”
“It looks familiar.”
“We sometimes pass her in the night, and that is something. She’s like a lit-up birthday cake on the water.” He claps his hands. “Ready to shop?”
“I’m ready to eat.”
“Sure, sure.”
We cross the street and go into Brownie’s Donut & Pastry Shop, and before I can finish looking at all the pastries, rolls, and doughnuts behind a glass case, Slade calls out, “A bag of pepperoni rolls.”
I’m staring hard at some freshly glazed doughnuts. “And a dozen of these.”
“Make it two,” Slade says. “And a six-pack of Coke.”
We take our “lunch” down Front Street to the wharf where the American Queen lies tied to a pier at the bottom of a bricked walk, and we lounge on the grass just above the Marietta sign. The American Queen is glorious. I count six decks, American flags rippling in the breeze on the top deck, a massive red paddlewheel in the back, two black smokestacks sprouting in the front like torches.
“Incredible,” I say as I finish my fifth doughnut in five minutes.
“Careful now,” Slade says, munching on a pepperoni roll covered with mustard. “You’re liable to get addicted to sugar next.”
My stomach makes all sorts of noises, but I don’t want to stop. Sugar just tastes sweeter now. “Sugar isn’t addictive.”
He winks. “Depends on what kind of sugar you’re talking about. Bet Mary’s sweet.”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think she’s doing right now?”
I see her still sitting on the bottom step. “Hating me.”
“Ah, Manny, you got to start thinking positively. The worst is over, right? You’re healing up, and at the rate you keep putting away those doughnuts, you’re gonna be fattened up in no time.”
“Maybe.” My stomach groans some more. Maybe it’s groaning for more, I don’t know. I stop after my sixth doughnut. “You know I can’t go back with you.”
“
Cap’n told me.” He smacks his lips and licks the mustard off his fingers. “Still, we made it last five days. What are your plans?”
“Not sure.” I take a swig of Coke, and my eyes water from the carbonation. When’s the last time I had a cold can of Coke?
“Thinking about going back?”
“All the time.” It’s like I’ve been through the Middle Passage or something, and the ship is finally on shore. “But, I don’t know, I’m … not sure I should go back just yet.”
“You’re worried you’ll go right back to it.”
In a hot second. “Yeah. My body may be over it, but my mind isn’t. When the captain gave me that roll of money, the first thing that popped into my head was getting a bundle and some works and shooting up somewhere. The first thing that popped into my head. I ain’t ready to go back.”
“I hear you.” He wipes his mouth with a napkin. “Back in Pittsburgh, you had to have a job, right?”
“Yeah. Repairing houses mostly.”
“Yeah? You good with your hands?”
I laugh. “I can replace a mean toilet, but only if it’s Chinese.” I spend the next ten minutes explaining that one to Slade, and he can’t stop laughing.
“Does your job keep you from thinking about it?” Slade asks.
“Some.” Though I was usually high or just coming down when I got to work.
“So get a job.”
I blink. “Just … get a job.”
“Yeah. Get a job. Today.”
I shake my head. “With no ID, no references, looking like I do with no underwear, no belt, and these?” I point at my boots. “Who’d hire me?”
Slade points at the American Queen. “They might.”
“Right.”
“You never know.” He stands and dusts some grass off his pants. “Far as they know, you’ve been working on a towboat and want a change of scenery.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Sometimes crazy works.” He stares me down. “Crazy worked for you when you jumped, right?”
“But this is different.”
He shrugs. “Well, it doesn’t hurt to ask, now, does it? They have to have a crew of at least a hundred-fifty on there. Maybe they’ll have room for one more.”
He starts down the hill toward the American Queen, but I don’t move. “You’re just going to walk on and ask them?”
“Yeah.”
I stumble down behind him. “Just like that?”
“Well, I ain’t going up to the Captain and ask him for a job for you, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m gonna find the head Negro in charge.” He points to a chubby black man winding a rope as thick as my arm around his elbow and shoulder.
“Him?” I say.
“Does he look like the H-N-I-C?” Slade says. “The man’s just a hand like me, but he knows who’s running the show, right?”
“I guess.”
He stops before we reach the gangplank. “Listen quick. You are my cousin Manny from Pittsburgh, and—”
“They aren’t gonna believe that,” I interrupt.
“Manny, we’re all cousins. I thought you knew that. Now you’re my cousin, okay? It’s important.”
“Okay, okay, we’re cousins. But how’s that—”
“Watch.”
Slade rolls up that gangplank onto the American Queen like he owns the boat, like he owns an entire fleet of boats, and he heads straight for the hand winding the rope. “How you doin’?” he asks all country-like.
“Jes’ fine,” the man replies.
Man, his arms are huge, like he has two angry pit bulls for biceps, and his chest is about to break through his coveralls.
“Name’s Slade, just off the Boonesboro.”
“I’m Rufus.” He looks like a Rufus, only he has the youngest baby face to go with that big body.
“I’m lookin’ for a job for my cousin Manny here,” Slade says.
Rufus looks at me. “What can he do?”
“He’s been swabbing decks and cleaning mostly for us on the Boonesboro for a good while, and he wants a change of pace, you know, to get off the boat for a spell.”
“Uh-huh,” Rufus says, stretching “uh-huh” a lot further than two syllables. Where is Rufus from?
“Who might I talk to about this?” Slade asks.
Rufus looks back at me again. “Cleanin’, huh?”
“Yeah.”
He turns back to Slade. “Can he bus tables or cook?”
I clear my throat. I’m over here, Rufus. “Sure. Whatever you need done.”
Rufus turns and squints at me. “Where you from?”
“Pittsburgh.”
“Yeah?” He loops the rope around a pole. “Got a cousin up there in Homewood, name of Greeley. You ever hear of him?”
Not unless he’s done some time at County. “Greeley? No. He got a nickname?”
Rufus pokes out his lips. “Nah. We jes’ always called him Greeley.”
“Sorry, I don’t know him. Pittsburgh’s a big place.”
“Don’t I know it,” Rufus says. “Got lost as I don’t know what last time we was up there. Ain’t none of the streets go straight.”
Slade puts his hand on Rufus’s shoulder, and the two of them walk along a railing away from me. Rufus looks back at me every now and then before nodding at Slade, shaking his hand, and disappearing up some stairs.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“He’s gone to get the H-N-I-C.” He buttons the top button of my shirt and whisks lint from my shoulders. “You look good, Manny. You ready for your interview?”
“Already?”
“Yep. Country boy Rufus back there told me you got a shot at a mess job.”
“No kidding? Do I have a good shot?”
“Well … Maybe. He told me that you got to take a Coast Guard physical and a drug test. Oh yeah. And they’ll do a background check on you, too.”
Just when I was starting to think positively. “So why are we having the interview? You know I can’t pass my physical, much less pass a drug test or get by with the background check. They’ll find out I’m on probation and—”
“There you go again, thinking those negative thoughts. You can pass that physical. Just tell them you’ve been getting over the flu. They’ll understand. Rufus tells me all they do is take your blood pressure and listen to your heart and lungs. Just keep your sleeves rolled down. Tell them you’re cold or something. As for the drug test, well, Rufus says his pee is pure as the Mississippi rain, or so he told me.”
“What?”
“How do you think all those professional athletes pass their drug tests?” Slade says. “Rufus got your back. Only thing they’re going to find in his pee is pork. You see the size of his ham hocks?” Then Slade sighs. “That only leaves the background check.”
“I don’t even have any ID.”
“Which is just as well because you’re gonna be me for a while, at least until you get to where you’re going. You play this right, and you’ll be in New Orleans in no time.”
“New Orleans?”
“That’s where you’re headed, right? To find your daddy?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.” But, of course, I’m lying, and I know Slade knows I’m lying, so there’s no use in denying it. “Okay, I have thought about it, but the chance of finding him after twenty-nine years is impossible.”
“You believe what you’re saying? Impossible? I am looking at an impossibility. A man jumps off a bridge and doesn’t die. That’s an impossibility that will never be an impossibility for me again.” He fishes in his back pocket for his wallet, taking out an Illinois driver’s license and handing it to me. “Memorize the social security number and the date of birth.”
“This won’t work.”
He runs a finger under his social security number. “Memorize it.”
“But where were you born? Won’t this make me from East St. Louis?”
“So you were born in East St. Louis, and you’ve lived in Pitt
sburgh for most of your life. It’s easy to explain, right? You rode the Boonesboro up to Pittsburgh and back to here.”
He makes it sound too easy. “I don’t know.”
“Just relax. Here comes the H-N-I-C.”
I look up a set of stairs and see Rufus leading an older black woman toward us. She wears a reddish skirt, maroon vest, long-sleeved white shirt, and a black string tie. “She’s the—”
“Hush,” Slade says. “And smile.”
“I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.”
“Don’t smile then,” Slade whispers.
She stands in front of me. “This him?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rufus says, and then he goes about his business.
She looks me up and down, her soft brown eyes dancing over my clothes, her thin eyebrows rising and falling. “What can you do?”
“Whatever you need done.” I sound so desperate. I add “ma’am” for good measure.
“Uh-huh.” She looks up at Slade. “Rufus tells me this is your cousin. That true? You don’t look a lick alike.”
“We’re second cousins, on my granddaddy’s side,” Slade says smoothly.
“Uh-huh,” she says. She sighs and looks back at me. “You in this for the long haul, or will I have to take attendance?”
“I’m not sure I understand,” I say, even though I do.
“You gonna jump ship at the next big city?” she asks.
I look down. “No, ma’am.”
“Uh-huh.” She shakes her head. “We could use you, don’t get me wrong. Hard to serve a full boat of four hundred folks three times a day when you’re understaffed, but I have to know you’ll be around.”
“I’ll be around.”
“So, are you running from or running to?” she asks.
I look up into her eyes briefly.
“Only two kinds of folks try to get work this way, those who are running from, and those who are running to. Which one are you? Are you a from or are you a to?”
“A little of both.”
She looks at Slade. “He always this talkative?”
“Yep,” Slade says.
She nods. “That’s good. I like a quiet kitchen.” She smiles for the first time. “I’m Rose Neal, and you will call me ‘Yes ma’am’ and ‘No ma’am.’ I’ve been running the kitchen on this boat for twenty-two years.”
Rose doesn’t look old at all, her face all smooth, her hair dark and full.