The River Rose (24 page)

Looking at Roberty, Clint said guiltily, "Okay, I guess I was supposed to be the responsible grown-up. Roberty, quit trying to look like you're eating, it makes my stomach hurt. Marvel, I'll make you some more fried hominy tomorrow, for tonight you're excused from supper."

"Thank you," she sighed with relief.

"I'll git you some bicarbonate of sody, Roberty," Ezra said. "It'll make you feel better."

"Thanks, Ezra," he said faintly.

The men finished eating and everyone helped wash up. Roberty was feeling better, and Marvel seemed none the worse for their visit to the confectioner's.

Clint said, "Vinnie, why don't we have a little music tonight?"

"Fine with me," he agreed. He left to fetch his violin, and the others all went down to the firebox. It was a small room, crowded with the two boilers, all the pipes, and with wood stacked along the walls. But it was very warm, almost hot, so Clint opened the double doors out onto the main deck. Leo laid down across Ezra's feet, and he scolded him, so he ambled off and collapsed just under the boilers, panting like it was an August noon.

Vince came back down and took a few minutes tuning his fiddle. Roberty asked Clint, "Can you sing that song you were singing this morning? That Mr. Foster song?"

"I sure will, and it's easy, so I expect you and everyone else to help me after you catch on," Clint said. Vince played a few chords, and Clint sang:

I come from Alabama
With a banjo on my knee
I'm going to Louisiana,
My true love for to see.

Oh, Susannah,
Oh don't you cry for me
For I come from Alabama
With a banjo on my knee.

Ezra, Vince, and Clint sang the verses and the children hummed, but after the second verse they sang the chorus with gusto. Then Clint sang "Old Folks at Home," "Cockles and Mussels," and "Yankee Doodle."

"How 'bout this one?" Vince said, grinning, and started playing a lively tune. Clint sang:

As I was a-gwine down the road,
With a tired team and a heavy load,
I crack'd my whip and the leader sprung,
I says day-day to the wagon tongue.

Turkey in the straw, turkey in the hay,
Roll 'em up and twist 'em up in a high tuckahaw
And twist 'em up a tune called Turkey in the Straw!

Clint sang all five verses, and Marvel and Roberty clapped when he finished. "What's a tuckahaw, Mr. Clint?" Marvel asked.

"That's where they put the turkey after he's rolled up and twisted up," Clint answered with a grin.

Marvel sniffed. "It is not. You just made it up."

"It's a good word, though, isn't it? I like it,
tuckahaw
. I think you should name your next doll Tuckahaw."

Next they sang "De Camptown Races," and when they were finished Clint said, "Miss Marvel, would you do me the honor of dancing with me?"

Marvel said, "But I don't know how to dance!"

"'Camptown Races' is a good polka song. C'mon, I'll teach you." He nodded to Vince, who began to play. Clint scooped up Marvel in his arms. "Heel, toe, away we go!" He danced and Marvel giggled, her eyes starry. Roberty and Ezra clapped and sang, and Vince played the song all the way through twice.

"Gunness!" Marvel said when Clint set her down. "I didn't know dancing was so easy! And so much fun!"

"And so thirsty," Clint said. "How about some cider, Ezra?"

"Be right back wid it," he said, and went upstairs to the galley.

Roberty went over to sit by Vince, who started showing him how to hold a violin and run the bow across the strings. Clint sat down on a cracker box next to Marvel's cushioned chair. "So you like to dance, huh? Then I think that Vinnie should teach you a couple of jigs, and I'll teach you a waltz. Would you like that?"

"Yes, I would so much!" she said. "And I want to learn all the words to 'Turkey in the Straw.'"

"Yes, ma'am," Clint said. "After I get something to drink we'll all learn 'Turkey in the Straw.'"

Marvel asked, "But first would you please sing 'Avaymaria' for me? I just loved that song, when you sang it on Christmas Eve. Please?"

"I wish I could, little one, but I'm afraid it's not possible," he said gravely.

"Why not?"

Clint explained, "See, when you heard me sing on Christmas Eve, I was singing in what's called my
operatic voice.
It's different from when I sing 'Turkey in the Straw.'"

Marvel nodded knowingly. "You've been singing really good tonight, but it's not like Avaymaria. But it's still you singing, why can't you sing your 'pratic voice now?"

"It's hard, it's real hard to sing like that. To be able to sing like that all the time, you have to practice every day. And before you sing a real song, you have to warm up the muscles in your throat and neck and shoulders and chest and even your stomach."

"But you already have big muscles," Marvel said insistently. "And why don't you practice every day?"

Clint grinned. "Because it would be so silly, everyone would laugh at me, and I'd probably laugh at myself. When you practice you do this." He stood up, placed one hand theatrically over his heart, threw out his other hand, and thundered out an operatic: "LA-LA-LAAAAAA!" Leo scrambled up and looked around in alarm.

Marvel laughed, and Clint sat back down. "See? Told you. And I gotta tell you, Marvel, for you I'd sing anything if I could, but 'Ave Maria' is kinda hard anyway."

"It is? Why?" she asked curiously.

"When you sing, you want the sound to come from way deep inside your chest, and kinda roll out of your throat. That's why when you sing opera, you open your mouth really wide. Here, do this." He opened his mouth and sang middle C, "Ahhhh."

Obediently, Marvel opened her pink mouth to a round
o
and sang, "Ahhhh."

"That's good," Clint said. "Now listen: Ah-vay-Ma-REE-uh. Try opening your mouth and singing REEEEEE."

Marvel tried, then said with disgust, "It's coming out my nose."

"Yeah, it does." He reached over and gently pinched Marvel's nostrils shut. "Now try."

Marvel sang: "REEEE. Now it's coming out my ears!"

"Uh-huh. Such are the woes of singing in your operatic voice," Clint said lightly. "That's why I'm too yellow-bellied to try it when I haven't been practicing."

Ezra came in from the outside stairs then, holding a tray of steaming mugs. Jeanne followed him in. "Clint's been singin' us up a storm tonight," Ezra was saying.

"Really?" Jeanne said with interest. She pulled back her hood and took off her cape in the warm room. "And I've missed it!"

"We're going to sing 'Turkey in the Straw' some more, Mama," Marvel said eagerly. "You put the flowers in your hair like I said! Oh, you look beautiful."

Clint, who had risen when Jeanne came in, said softly, "You sure do, Jeanne. Just like the fairy queen and the fairy princess, when I first saw you and Marvel."

Jeanne blushed a little with pleasure. "Why, thank you, Mr. Hardin. That's very kind of you."

"Not really," he said, offering her his crackerbox. "You're going to join us, aren't you?"

"I certainly am. I don't want to miss 'Turkey in the Straw.'"

They all sipped their hot cider and talked about loading up the
Rose
in the morning, and Jeanne's and Marvel's upcoming shopping trip. "Marvel simply must have some new dresses," Jeanne said. "Mr. Masters is going to accompany us and introduce us to the finest dressmaker in Memphis. Isn't that wonderful, Marvel?"

"Yes, Mama. May I have pink?"

"You may. And blue to match your eyes, and green for coming spring."

Clint whispered something to Vince, who nodded. Clint said, "Before we learn 'Turkey in the Straw,' I want to sing a song for Marvel. I can't sing the one you wanted, Marvel, but maybe you'll like this one."

Vince played a slow sweet, haunting strain and Clint began to sing.

Black, black, black
Is the color of my true love's hair.
Her lips are like a rose so fair
And the prettiest face and the neatest hands,
I love the grass whereon she stands
She with the wondrous hair.

Marvel thought the song was for her, and perhaps it was; but as Clint sang he looked only at Jeanne Bettencourt.

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

On the river Jeanne counted time differently. Days were not days, they were distances marked off by islands, snags, sandbars, points, chutes. Nights were not dusk to sunrise. The night was the town: Helena, Napoleon, Pine Bluff, Little Rock, Memphis. Weeks did not translate as seven days. Jeanne counted and logged trips, which were eight days. By the middle of March, she was taken aback to see, thumbing through her logs, that she had made only six round trips as pilot of the
Helena Rose.
She had been in the wheelhouse driving so much that it seemed she had been on the river for a long time.

It was the middle of their seventh trip, and the middle of March. They were overnighting at Pine Bluff on their return home. Jeanne sat at her desk with her captain's logbook, a lantern casting a bright aura around her and the rest of the cabin into deep shadow. She looked up at the window. A wild storm shot fat drops of rain that splatted noisily against the glass. Occasionally a garish glare lit her face, a bolt of lightning, and immediately afterwards
basso profundo
growls of thunder.

Jeanne put her head into her hands and closed her eyes.
What if the creeks are flooding?
she worried. As spring had grown nearer, so had her anxiety. She wished devoutly that she could talk to someone about her concerns. Once, she thought, she would have told George Masters her fears that she wouldn't be able to handle the
Rose
on the lower part of the Arkansas River during the spring rains. But since he had talked to her about the article in the newspaper, his attitude seemed to have changed from wholehearted support of her venture to a sort of patient indulgence. She was reluctant to tell him about any setbacks or hardships on the
Helena Rose
. She had the feeling that he was just waiting for an excuse to talk her out of piloting. In spite of her current fears, Jeanne was far from ready to retire from the river. She must have as much of her father in her as she did her mother, she reflected.

The natural person to talk to should be Clint Hardin, her business partner and the engineer. But Jeanne refused to contemplate confiding in him, for she simply didn't trust him. He and Vince always left the boat on their overnight stops, and she knew they must be going to saloons. They were careful, and courteous, she admitted. They must get all their drinking and carousing done before they returned to the
Helena Rose
, because Jeanne had never heard them come back, even though the door to Clint's cabin was directly across from her cabin door.

But there were also the two- or three-day stays in Memphis after they concluded a trip. Clint and Vince left in the evenings, as usual. One morning when Jeanne left her cabin after they had arrived in town the night before, she could smell the essence of sandalwood in the hallway in front of Clint's door. She only knew what sandalwood smelled like because a gentleman at the Gayoso had always brought his own soap, sandalwood soap. To Jeanne the scent represented something costly, glamorous, mysterious, and it was outlandish to think that Clint Hardin would buy it. It had to be something to do with a woman.

Also several times she had caught the barest whiff of a woman's perfume in the hallway. Jeanne wondered if the sandalwood woman and the perfume woman were the same person before she berated herself harshly for wasting her time even thinking about such things.

And then, of course, there had been the infamous Suzette incident. One day as they were in Memphis loading up, a buxom girl of about eighteen with raven hair and dark snapping eyes danced onto the
Helena Rose
. Jeanne was standing up on the hurricane deck, just above the bow, watching the roustabouts load. When Suzette boarded, she could hear Vince and Clint laughing. Later Vince had said something to Clint about going to see Suzette at the Bell and Whistle that night, or she'd have a thing or two to say when they got back.

None of these things were Jeanne's concern; but she felt she had good reasons not to trust Clint Hardin.

As these things ran through her mind, she took a mental step back.
It's not that I don't trust him, I trust him with Marvel and I trust him with money. That is a lot of trust. It's just that I can't confide in him, talk to him about personal things.

At the moment Jeanne's troubles weren't personal, they were about the
Helena Rose
. It was her own conflicting emotions about Clint Hardin that were in the way. But she was tired and she didn't want to analyze all that. She would see what the morning would bring.