The River Queen (36 page)

Tom and Jerry look at me askance. “Sure, Mary, of course he is.”

“Give me a little potato vodka,” Tom says, “and I'm a sorcerer too.”

47

F
ASTER THAN
a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Look up in the sky. It's a bird; it's a plane; it's Superman. How is it that I distinctly recall such adages of my youth? The Jiminy Cricket song. “You are a human animal.…” Or Roy Rogers on Trigger, crooning “Happy Trails.” These things stick like glue in my head. Like childhood itself. So when I saw that Metropolis, Illinois, is on our way up the Ohio, I told Jerry we had to stop.

Metropolis, Illinois, is the only town in America named Metropolis. In the early 1970s when other river towns, such as Cairo just downstream, were dying, Metropolis was looking for a public relations plug. For years since Superman's inception as a comic book character in 1938, the Metropolis post office had been receiving mail addressed to Superman, Metropolis, USA. So, with huge fanfare, the town leaders decided that the way to secure their future was to adopt Superman and declare their town his.

In the middle of Metropolis a twelve-foot statue of Superman looms and there is a Superman museum and I want to see it, though neither of the boys do. I push on alone. It's a chilly morning, perhaps not much more than fifty. Last night's storm brought a cold front down from the north. A promise of fall, or even winter in the air. As I walk, I anticipate phone booths where you could make a quick change into your red cape and jersey, but Metropolis is a fairly ordinary hamlet. There is a good-size grocery store within walking distance of the boat, right outside the fort, and I intend to avail myself of supplies later on.

I stroll the four or five blocks into town, pausing for a visit at the
Metropolis Planet.
Because it is a weekly, the town newspaper cannot call itself the
Daily Planet,
but along with the adoption of Superman, the local newspaper changed its name. I pick up a few copies of the
Metropolis Planet,
along with a souvenir copy, for which I paid five dollars, telling about how it came to be that Metropolis, Illinois, became home to a superhero.

Outside of the Superman museum there's actually a phone booth and a sign for the
Daily Planet.
Let's face it; the guys who have played Superman haven't had much luck. Some have postulated that there is a curse on those who take on the Superman role, and two of them have been named, coincidentally, Reeves and Reeve. Christopher Reeve suffered a tragic horseback riding accident that left him paralyzed, but George Reeves is another story.

In the 1950s his star was rising. He took the part of Superman and was typecast from then on. When the television series ended in 1959, Reeves fell on hard times. He was found with a single bullet wound to the head on June 16, 1959, three days before he was to be married. The coroner's office declared it a suicide. But there were no fingerprints on the gun. No powder burns to the head. The shell gun casing was found under the body and the gun was at his feet. Downstairs his fiancée and guests were waiting for him to come to dinner. Los Angeles murder buffs have never come to a consensus on what really happened to George Reeves. But both Noel Neill, who played Lois Lane, and Jack Larsen, who played Jimmy Olsen, believed it was foul play.

The Superman museum, however, doesn't dwell on such things. There are no suggestions of mob hits, jealous lovers, or cover-ups, all of which the buffs have posited. This is a place of memorabilia. Everything that has ever happened to Superman or had his face on it, they've got. Buttons, comic books, dolls, paintings, statuettes, costumes, stills from Superman movies, including both George and Christopher flying through space, and other would-be Supermen performing various amazing feats. In the end, given that I'm not much of a superhero girl myself, I grow bored of looking at the buttons and seeing the sad faces of the young couple who work there. I buy a few postcards for the children in my life who still believe they can fly, and leave.

As I head back past the giant statue of Superman that looms over the town, I stop at the grocery store and buy, among other things, olive oil. A pointless purchase, really, as we only have a day or so left. As I walk by Fort Massac, prisoners in black-and-white prison stripes and matching hats chop trees and pile the wood. After a few minutes their guard gives them a command and the men line up and march, single file, into a waiting van.

48

T
HREE MILES
north of Paducah, Kentucky, we lock through. This time because we are going upstream, we rise ten feet. I hold the line and Jerry shows me once again how to loop it through. On the radio the lockmaster calls us, “Northbound
Friend Ship,
come in on your port side. You'll need all your bumpers and fenders out and two twenty-five-foot lines.”

“Roger,” Jerry says. We've never had to use our own lines before, or put all our fenders and bumpers down, but Jerry explains that each lock and each lockmaster has its own rules and regulations. “Tom, get us two lines.”

Tom starts to secure the bowline and Jerry snaps at him. “Not the bowline. We've got loose lines. I don't want to risk our bowline.”

Tom shrugs and looks up at me. “Same difference,” he mumbles, but Jerry hears him.

“Not the same,” he says. “Safety first. We need the bowlines.”

Tom and I go about gathering two twenty-five-foot lines, which we loop around two bollards as we lock through. We're running low on fuel and Jerry is getting nervous about this. We assume there's a fuel dock in Paducah, but as we come to Paducah, and pass it, we don't see a fuel dock.

About half a mile past Paducah, we see what looks like a fueling platform. “What about there?” I ask Jerry.

“Worth a shot.”

As we approach the platform, we see it is covered in cables and old tires and made of wooden slats. A guy in greasy overalls works there alone. “Hello!” Jerry calls, but the guy ignores us. “Excuse me!” Jerry says, and the worker turns away.

We pull up alongside despite the very obvious cold shoulder. “I'm sorry to bother you. I see how much you're working here,” Jerry says, “but we're low on fuel. Can you help us out?”

“Nope,” is our one-word reply. This is starting to feel like an outtake from
Deliverance
and Tom and Jerry are uncomfortable as well.

“Know where we can?”

“Twenty-two miles south at Kentucky Dam.”

We look at one another. “We aren't going to make that,” Jerry says.

“Can't we just get gas from a gas station?” I ask them, and they nod. It seems that we can. “So … why don't we?”

Tom and Jerry agree that we'll go back to Paducah, where there's a courtesy dock. We'll tie up there and see if we can't figure out how to take our gas drums to the nearest gas station. None of us is very optimistic, but it's worth a shot.

Paducah, Kentucky, is a pretty hip town. Known for its harness racing at the Players Bluegrass Downs, it also has lots of cute shops, restaurants, old cobblestone streets, and a river history museum. This is the place where John Banvard began his artistic career modestly enough on the banks of the Ohio.

Tom plans to try and rustle up some gasoline. He never wants to explore or see where we are. He wants to be near the boat, his dog, and his engines, and he seems content with this. It is a chilly morning as we leave him and Jerry and I head off to visit the river museum. Afterward we stop in the Bayou Cajun Restaurant for some takeout. While we're waiting, we decide to have a beer. Though it's only a little after noon, the bar is open and there's a couple of regulars (you just know they are regulars) in jean jackets. One has no teeth. We take a pint of what's on draft and I must admit, though it is the middle of the day, the cold beer tastes good.

There are various stuffed animals—a monkey crawling up a rope, a stuffed frog—and I compliment the bartender on her taste in stuffed animals. “Oh, these ain't just stuffed animals,” the man with no teeth says, “show her Big Mouth Bill Bass.”

She takes down this fish, mounted on a piece of wood, winds something, and the bass starts to sing, “Take me to the river, drop me in the water,” its thick red lips flapping. When she sees I am laughing hysterically, she pulls a frog down and he sits in front of me, singing “It's a Wonderful World” in an excellent Louis Armstrong rendition.

As we get back to the boat, Tom is happily pouring gasoline into the engines. “I got gas,” he says, clearly pleased with himself. “I got gas.” He tells us he was walking to find a gas station and a woman stopped him. She asked if he had a boat and was he looking for gasoline. He replied he was.

“It's a disgrace we don't have a gas dock in Paducah,” this woman said.

“She made two trips with me,” Tom tells us. “She even waited while I filled up, then took me back for more.” He pauses, shaking his head as he's gassing up. “That's the kind of people you want to meet on the river,” Tom says.

49

A
FEW
more miles up the Ohio and the river forks. We make our turn onto the Tennessee and I feel this trip is coming to an end for me. Perhaps it already ended when we left our little campsite on the Mississippi and turned onto the Ohio. I felt a spirit leave me then. This Tennessee River is wide and beautiful, but I have left something behind. For a time I had found home. Now I am once again on my way.

Tom agrees with me. As we sit on the flybridge, he says he wasn't “a fan” of the Ohio. He wants his river back. I'm nodding as Samantha Jean gets out of her bomber jacket and stands, whining, at my feet. I decide to give it a try. “Okay, Sammy girl, big jump,” and she propels herself from the floor into my arms.

The dog nestles in my lap as Tom pilots straight ahead. I think he's a bit stunned and perhaps a little jealous that his ornery dog has found her way onto my lap. As the sun starts to go down, a chill is in the air. It's been our coldest day yet, anyway, but now with the sun dropping it's just cold. Jerry won't let me navigate here because we are traveling without maps in uncharted terrain, and I find myself growing colder and bored, even with Samantha Jean on my lap.

Even the landscape is altered. Here it is all flat. The reddish brown beaches of the delta. It is dusk as we near the Kentucky Dam. I am topside, catching the fading light, and I see right away that we've got two barges ahead of us, going downriver. That's at least a two-hour wait. Quimby's warned us of this. They said that this is the busiest lock on the river and long delays are possible.

This doesn't seem to bother the boys, but I am anxious to be on our way. Jerry and Tom are gabbing back and forth and I can hear their guffaws, which I've grown weary of now. I am tired of the confines of this space. It's cold and there's nowhere to go. I sit on my yoga mat, wrapped in my moon and stars flannel blanket on the flybridge. Silver fish are jumping as the sun is setting on the Tennessee. On the shore a blue heron stalks them. After the sun goes down, it's too cold to stay on top and I go below. I find Tom, sitting silently on the bow, staring at the lock. “It's our last lock,” he says.

I nod. It's true, it is. “I guess I don't want this trip to end,” he says. He's got Samantha Jean wrapped up in his jacket like a baby in a Snugli. Even in the dark I can see his eyes well up. “Do you want to talk about it?” I ask him.

“Naw,” he says. “Not now.” He gets up and leaves. A few minutes later I hear him topside, making his bed, and before I know it, he's laughing with Jerry over something someone I've never met before said.

At 7:30 it's pitch-black and there's a tow named the
Tennessee Hunter
with a six-hundred-foot barge, filled with sand and gravel. We are moving into position ahead of it, but still waiting for another barge to clear. Tom wants to drop anchor, but Jerry says we'll idle here. “Really?” Tom says.

“Yeah, I think so.”

The big black barge moves into place behind us. “We'll get through after this tow. Tom, check the aft light over the transom. Make sure she's on. Looks like the
Tennessee Hunter's
just gonna hang back.”

The lockmaster comes on to our radio. “
Friend Ship,
hold back to port in case he has to reverse.” I'm watching Jerry hang back as we start to swing into the levee.

“Let's try an anchor,” he says to Tom. “Which way's the wind coming from?”

“Across the port bow,” Tom says.

“Okay, let's throw an anchor over her port bow,” and Tom throws it. In the darkness we hear it splash.

“I'm gonna leave her running because we're awfully close to shore.”

Tom seems nervous and I can tell he doesn't like the look of this. “We're getting some current here, Sir. It's from the lock. She's really kicking up bubbles and pushing us back. Shove your ass that way,” Tom says, pointing in the opposite direction we are drifting.

“I'm going to try and move us from the shore.” Jerry looks concerned as we are drifting closer and closer to the shore.

“Want me to pull the anchor?”

“If you can. Yeah, they must be draining the lock and the valves are pushing us into the shore.”

Jerry revs the engines and Tom tugs on the anchor line. “Okay, now we're off the shore.”

“Just kick back.” Then more sharply to Tom, “Just kick back! Let me do this.” After he's made his maneuver he looks sheepishly at Tom. “Sorry. I just wanted concentration.…”

“Rock 'n' roll,” Tom says. “Hey, that
Tennessee Hunter,
he's hanging way back.…”

It appears that
Tennessee Hunter
is going to perform the river courtesy of letting us go ahead of him. He could easily come in with us or exert his right-of-way as a commercial vessel, but he chooses to hang back and after a two-and-a-half-hour wait we proceed into Kentucky Lake. We enter a huge, dark pool of water, illumined with amber lights, where we will rise fifty-seven feet. The gates of the lock are an eerie golden color as suddenly the water begins to pour into the lock.