The Best Way to Lose (22 page)

“Power down and hold her in place against the current,” Trace ordered, and Pilar felt the changing pitch of the engines as Morgan signaled the change in speed to the engine room.

A voice squawked over the walkie-talkie. “I can see the smoke.” It was Tucker Smith, from his position at the bow of one of the lead barges.

Her gaze flashed to the front where grayblack smoke was billowing against the flat horizon. But the barges themselves were not in sight, hidden by the far bend in the river.

“Anything yet?” Trace snapped the question at Morgan.

“Won’t be able to get a fix on them until they come around that point,” he answered, watching the radar screen intently.

“Come on, Pilar.” The rough grip of his hand clasped her high on the arm and aimed her toward the ladder. “I want you on the lower deck.” He followed her down, as if to insure that she went.

“Here they come.” One of the deckhands passed Trace a pair of binoculars, which he trained on dark shapes belching black smoke.

From the top deck Morgan shouted, “Trace!”

“I see them!” He raised his voice to answer,
then made a sweep of the intervening stretch of river with his glasses.

The tension in the air was almost electrical. Pilar’s skin seemed to tingle with it as she watched the plume of dark smoke. Everyone seemed poised and motionless, straining to see.

“The current’s going to swing them right into us.”

“Jeezus! If that fire sets off this sulfur, this whole thing will explode. There won’t be anything left of us to find.”

The predictions followed one on top of the other, shocking Pilar into an awareness of the full extent of their danger. She looked at Trace, her mouth open with nothing coming out.

“Tie off those barges to the trees!” He was rifling out orders while everyone else was standing around in a numbed trance. “And get ready to cut the boat loose from them. Move!” The crew scattered, scrambling onto the barges, half of them jumping onto the bank to catch the lines thrown by the others. “Evers!” He motioned impatiently for the cook to join them.

“If you’ve got in mind what I think—” the cook began.

“If I’m going to lose it all, I’m not going to stay here like a sitting duck and wait for it. With those barges tied up front, there was no way we could have outmaneuvered those runaways in the channel. At least now we’ve got a chance.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Don’t worry. God takes care of food and losers.” It was only Trace’s surface attention the cook had; all the rest was trained on the activity of the crew and the distant runaway barges. It gave his remarks an offhand quality. The same impersonal touch was present when he took Pilar by the arm and pushed her into Evers’ keeping. “Take Pilar and get her out of here. And don’t stay on the barges. Get her up on the levee.”

It took her a second to realize that Trace was putting her off the boat. “No! I don’t—”

Trace angrily cut across her words. “I don’t have time to argue with you!” His glance slashed to the cook as he ordered curtly, “Get her off.”

Her arms were pinioned by the cook’s hands, preventing her from going after Trace when he strode away to another section of the deck to hurry up the crew. Pilar resisted Evers’ attempt to draw her toward the barges.

“I’m staying here,” she insisted.

“You’d just be in the way, ma’am,” he said through his cigar. “And they’re gonna have their hands full just doin’ their jobs.”

“But if you stayed—”

“Hell, I’m a cook. I ain’t no hero. They can risk their damn fool necks if they want, but not me.” He forcibly guided her toward the access steps to the barges.

Reluctantly Pilar allowed herself to be driven along while she kept looking back at Trace, but he seemed to have put her from his
mind already. At the steps Evers paused next to the large “No Smoking” sign and removed the cigar from his mouth.

He speared it over the side into the water, muttering, “Damn waste.” Then he was leading Pilar onto the barges to the starboard side where the barges were being moored to the trees on the bank. Evers made the leap from the barge to the eroded edge of the bank and turned to urge her. “Come on!”

Pilar hesitated, then made the jump across the fast-running water. The bank started to crumble under her feet, but the cook had her by the hands and pulled her onto solid footing. The bowline was the last to be secured, and Pilar turned to watch the forward deckhand sprinting across the barges to the stern. She wanted to stay there and watch what they were going to do, but Evers was tugging at her to follow him.

There was a last glimpse of Trace standing on the top deck by the pilothouse. He seemed to be looking at her, but Pilar couldn’t be sure as she was pulled after Evers. The cook broke a path through the scrubby undergrowth along the tree-lined riverbank to the grassy slope of the high levee. Its steep angle forced them to slow their pace to climb to the top, slipping and grabbing at the long grass stems to pull them up.

When they reached the top, they startled half a dozen cows, peacefully grazing on the opposite slope. Slightly out of breath from the climb, Pilar turned to look back at the river.
Separated from the barges, the towboat had reversed clear of them. It made a pivoting swing and headed upstream, angling for the channel. Full power was given to the engines. Without the weight of the barges to slow it down, the towboat seemed to race across the water.

“Look at that baby move out,” Evers murmured.

“What are they going to do?” Apprehension shivered through her as she glanced from the towboat to the smoking barges, steadily approaching.

“They’re gonna try to get a line on them runaways and push them out of the channel and run ’em aground,” he explained, then half muttered to himself, “It’s a shame. That boat’s so new, it hasn’t even got its first paint scratch.”

His explanation sounded so matter-of-fact, yet his aside hinted that it wasn’t going to be that simple. Her tension grew.

“Is it dangerous?”

“I hope to shout.” Evers half laughed the response. “Those barges are running wild in that current. They got a head of steam built up that can sink anything that gets in their way. And the way that current’s tossin’ them and spinnin’ them about, there’s no tellin’ which way they’re goin’ next. Those barges could turn that towboat over like it was a paper cup.”

“My God,” she breathed, her blood suddenly running cold.

“That’s not saying it can’t be done,” he added quickly, as if realizing he had alarmed her.

“But why … why is he doing it?” Fear for him prompted her to make the half-angry demand.

“Well, I guess he figures somebody has to, and he’s on the scene.” The cook shrugged. “His choices weren’t all that great. Either way he stood to lose something—the new towboat and the sulfur barges in a big boom if those runaways hit it … or badly damaging the towboat if he tried to corral those barges. I don’t think Trace figures on it going to the bottom.”

The height of the flat-topped levee gave her a panoramic view of the action on the river. Her gaze was riveted to the shiny white towboat, racing on an intercepting course toward the trio of barges tumbling along in the current, the black smoke rolling from one of them, half obscuring the rest. The strain of waiting had her muscles knotted in tight coils as the two came closer and closer. Confusion burst through her when she suddenly noticed that the towboat was passing the barges.

“Aren’t they going to try to stop them?” Even as she asked the question, Pilar was frantically hoping that Trace had changed his mind.

“You don’t get in front of a charging bull. You circle around behind and grab its tail,” Evers advised her.

For a long span of minutes she lost sight of
the towboat in the dense smoke pouring from the hold of the outside barge. Then it emerged and appeared to take aim on the near barge. All the while the current was sweeping them downstream toward the moored sulfur barges.

“He’s staying clear of the one that’s on fire, and pickin’ the one farthest away from it.” He explained the reasons behind the choice while he strained to see every maneuver. “Look!” Evers excitedly grabbed her arm. “He’s steadying them!”

It took a second for Pilar to realize what he meant. Then she noticed that the loose barges were no longer directionless. They were steadily being pushed crosscurrent. They would miss the sulfur barges.

“Look! They’re gettin’ a line on it now.” He drew her attention to the figure of a man on the runaway barge, working to secure a line on the port side.

At this point the vessels were nearly level with their position on the levee. It was all happening right in front of her. One of the crew was standing on the starboard side, ready to throw a line to the deckhand on the barge.

Suddenly the turbulent, eddying current caught the partially secured barges and swung them around, slamming the near barge broadside into the towboat. Her heart went into her throat as Pilar watched the boat shudder from the violent force of the hit.

“Jeezus, he went over the side,” the cook breathed out. When Pilar looked, there was no
one standing on the starboard point of the bow. Two men were racing to the place where he’d been. Suddenly there was a head bobbing to the surface in the brown water. “He kept a hold of the line.” Relief sighed through his voice as the two men on deck began to drag the third in.

“Who is it? Can you tell?” Anxiety caught her in its grip.

“It’s Tucker, I think.” Evers made a cautious identification of the dripping man being hauled onto the deck.

The whirling river kept turning them, screening the towboat from her sight behind the thick smoke. Pilar was half sick with fear. Trace was on that tug. If she lost him…. A moan came from her throat. With a clarity she wished she had possessed an hour ago, she realized how deeply she loved him. Her teeth came shut on the rising cry of protest that it had taken her so long to see it.

Beside her Evers was anxiously patting his shirt pockets. “Damn, but I wish I had a cigar. What a time to not have any.”

Half blinded by tears, she could barely make out the white-painted towboat. After that broadside smash, it was back under power. It made another swing at the barge to secure the starboard line as the swollen river swiftly carried it downstream. The wind blew the hot, choking smoke toward the levee.

“With the heat from that fire, it must be like a furnace down there,” Evers declared with a small shake of his head. “I’ve seen oil fires
burn so hot, they just curl a man’s hairs—like singeing pinfeathers off a chicken.”

It was a detail that merely added to her mounting concern for Trace’s safety—and the safety of everyone on board. Her whole system seemed to be working overtime—her heart, her lungs, her nerves, her senses. All were functioning at top speed. Only the time was going slow.

“It looks like they got it secured,” the cook observed cautiously. His angle of sight was not the best. “They seem to have it under control, leastwise.”

It had all been unfolding in front of her for so long that Pilar had forgotten the twisting turn the Mississippi made a half mile downstream. As the distance increased, it gradually dawned on her that she was going to lose sight of them.

“Hey! Where are you goin’?” Evers reached out to check her when she started to brush past him to hurry along the levee after the disappearing vessels.

“We aren’t going to be able to see what’s happening when they go around that bend,” she explained quickly, unconsciously pulling against his restraining grip.

“Do you have any idea how far that is or how long it would take you to cover it afoot?” he challenged with tolerance. “By the time you got there, they’d probably be another mile downstream.”

“But—” She wanted to argue against his claim, but she knew it was hopeless to think
she could run fast enough to catch up with them.

“Besides—” Evers put the clincher on his argument. “They’ll likely drive the barges aground on the opposite bank, well clear of the channel. The river’s so wide at that point, you wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway.” There was an understanding look in his eyes. “We’re better off waitin’ here till they come back.”

Reluctantly Pilar was forced to agree with his opinion. He had a better grasp of the situation than she did, and more knowledge about what was likely to happen. She was reacting strictly on an emotional level.

But the waiting was agony. She kept watching the smoke in the sky, tracking their probable location on the river by it. It kept getting farther and farther away. It seemed an agony of time before it appeared stationary. The fast chopping noise of a helicopter’s rotary blades gradually grew louder. Pilar finally spotted it, flying above the river. A few minutes later fireboats rounded the far bend.

“Help’s on its way.” Evers acknowledged their imminent arrival on the scene. “They’ll be heading back soon. We might as well make our way down to the barges and wait for ’em there.”

She followed behind the cook as he edged his way down the steep slope of the levee to the trees and underbrush on the bank. He crashed his way through it, then waited for her.

“Can you make it?”

The high water had undermined the bank, making the footing less solid for the return jump, but Pilar nodded. She took a short, running start and landed hard on her feet atop the barge. The cook joined her right afterward.

Shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun off the water, she anxiously watched for the towboat to come around the river bend. It seemed the longest wait she had ever made in her life. She was about to decide something was wrong when she finally saw it.

“There it is!” she choked on a sob of relief as she eagerly pointed it out to the cook.

The
Santee Lady
showed the scars of her battle to bring the runaway barges under control. Her hull was scraped and scratched, and her white paint was grimy with the soot and smoke from the fire. In places it even appeared scorched by the fierce heat.

An exhausted crew lounged on her decks, rousing themselves with an effort when the battered towboat approached the moored barges. Pilar waited impatiently while it was maneuvered into position, searching the decks for a glimpse of Trace to verify to her own satisfaction that he was unharmed.