The River Rose (28 page)

"I've got a great idea," Clint said. "I want to take you all out to eat. We can celebrate Captain Jeanne's Dunk. You ever have German food,
kleines Mädchen
?"

"I don't know," Marvel replied, puzzled. "Mama knows. Do you speak German?"

"No, but I can sing in German," Clint said airily. "I know 'O Tannenbaum' and 'Stille Nacht.'"

"Yeah, but Her Ladyship says you sing German with an Italian accent," Vince joked. Clint gave him a dire warning glance.

They had just finished unloading in Memphis. Ezra had made lemonade, and Clint and Jeanne kept the boat stocked with the luxury of ice in the icebox. Everyone was sitting out on the main cargo deck, watching the furious activity on the docks. Twenty-two steamers were lined up in the waterway, and hundreds of people—roustabouts, crews, passengers, shippers, receivers, errand boys, woodmen—swarmed all over, shouting and shoving. After the
Rose
had been unloaded, they pulled down to the far end of the wharves and docked to get out of the way. Ezra had brought out crates for them to sit on, and Clint had remarked that he was going to go to town and get them some nice deck chairs. Now, after Vince's tell, he glanced cautiously at Jeanne. She pressed her lips together and looked down the docks, but said nothing.

Marvel asked, "Do you sing 'Avaymaria' in German?"

"No, that's actually in Latin," Clint replied. "And Vinnie has a big mouth, so he's going to tell you I sing Latin with a German accent. So, how 'bout it, everyone? I'll hire us a cart and we'll go to Mütter Krause's for dinner tomorrow. You too, Ezra. You gotta get off this boat sometime or you're going to start looking like a boiler."

He grinned. "Just so happens I love Mütter Krause's
Weiner schnitzel
. You betcha I'll go. How're you for sech a thing as
Weiner schnitzel
, Captain Jeanne?"

"I've never had it," she said distantly. "And I'm afraid that I have a previous engagement tomorrow, Clint." She was still looking away.

"I knew it, you always go with Mr. Masters," Marvel said impatiently. "But I can go with them, can't I? I want some weinersnits."

"Yes, you
may
go," Jeanne said. She rose and said, "Speaking of Mr. Masters, I see him coming now. If you all will excuse me, I think I'll go meet him."

He was strolling along dressed in a cream linen suit with a straw top hat. Jeanne had teased him about his "summer" walking stick, made of blonde ironwood with a silver knob with inlaid pearl.

After their greetings Jeanne tucked her arm into his as they walked slowly back to the
Rose.
"I see you brought me a present! How thoughtful, I love
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly.
It's so good for me to read with Marvel. She can't read nearly well enough for a newspaper yet, of course. But with pictures, she sounds out and learns new words. And Roberty too."

"Then I'll start bringing you one every week," he said gallantly. "It's little enough, since you won't let me buy you any gifts. It's depressing to be limited to flowers and newspapers. So how was the trip, Jeanne?"

"I fell in the river," she said with amusement. "The crew is calling it Captain Jeanne's Dunk."

He stopped walking and turned to grab both her arms. "You fell in! Are you hurt?"

"No, no, I'm just fine. I banged my shoulder against the paddle wheel, and I've got a lurid bruise that's quite dramatic, but it looks worse than it feels. To tell the truth, the whole thing was kind of funny."

"Funny," he repeated darkly as they started walking again. "You banged your shoulder, so you fell close to the paddle wheel. You could have hit your head, or even broken your back, Jeanne. That is
not
funny."

"But I didn't. So it did turn out to be funny, considering—"

"How did you get out?" he demanded. It was the first time he had ever interrupted her. His smooth classic features were dark and troubled.

"I'm an excellent swimmer," Jeanne retorted.

"You swim? And just how are you clothed when you swim?" he snapped.

"My father taught me to swim when I was very young. And after I got older, he found us a swimming hole just out of South Bend that was private, and we all swam there, even my mother. I haven't been swimming since I was sixteen years old, but even if I had it's none of your business what I wear," Jeanne said indignantly.

They had reached the
Rose
's landing stage, and George turned to her again and took her hands. "All right, let's forget all that for the moment. It's just that I'm worried, Jeanne. So many things can happen to people on riverboats. What you're doing is dangerous; steamboats are dangerous, the river is dangerous, the weather is dangerous, the people are dangerous. You just don't take care of yourself at all, otherwise you would never have fallen off the boat. You don't have any idea of what you're doing, do you?"

Jeanne pulled her hands away from him gently. She was very aware that everyone on the
Rose
was watching them. "So you honestly think that I don't know what I'm doing? How can you say that to me, George?"

"You're deliberately misunderstanding me. I was talking about you being more aware of the dangers on the river. That's all."

"Fine. I'll be more careful."

"Do you promise? Promise me, Jeanne. I worry, because I care about you so deeply," he finished in a low heartfelt voice.

Mollified, she nodded. "I know you do, George. I care for you too. Let's just not talk any more about me falling in. I can see that you'll never see that it really was funny. Anyway, I wanted to ask you, were you still thinking that we'd go somewhere tomorrow? Because unless you have special plans, I thought I'd go out with the crew and Marvel tomorrow for dinner."

He frowned. "But we always go out while you're in Memphis. As I've told you, it's very difficult for me, and I hope for you too, just seeing each other on your layovers. Of course I want to spend the day with you tomorrow. Go out with the crew? Surely you're joking! Where are you going to go with a riverboat crew, a saloon? You shouldn't even be seen in public with them!"

Jeanne drew herself upright and her eyes flashed. "I said, with the crew and Marvel. You are being insufferably rude and snobbish!"

"You did? I'm so sorry, Jeanne," he said instantly. "To tell you the blunt truth, when I realized you were saying you didn't want to see me tomorrow, I got terribly jealous. That's why I said what I did. Please forgive me, I didn't mean a word of it."

"Jealous? Oh, George, that's ridiculous!"

"I can't help it, I want you all to myself," he said with a half smile. "So now I'm rude, snobbish, and selfish."

"You're none of those things," Jeanne said quietly. "I know that very well."

"Then you will spend the day with me tomorrow?" he asked. "Please, Jeanne. The days I have with you are important to me above all things."

"All right," she said, tucking her arm back into his as they went up the gangplank. "But only because you brought me the
Illustrated Weekly.
"

Though Jeanne smiled at him, she still had misgivings. She really did want to go with the crew tomorrow. The reason she had been rather cool toward Clint was not because of Vince's mention of "Her Ladyship"; Jeanne had resigned herself to Clint's women. It was because she was thinking of how entangled she was with George Masters now. When they were in Memphis she saw very little of Marvel. Now she realized that George Masters hardly ever wanted Marvel to be with them. She supposed it might be understandable. He was a single man with no children and he was, she knew, in love with her. It was only natural that he wanted to be alone with her. He did ask for Marvel to come with them occasionally, and several times he had asked if he could buy Marvel some gift, which Jeanne always refused, but still it was generous of him. Still, it troubled her that he showed very little interest in her daughter.

Clint Hardin spent a lot of time with Marvel, and with Roberty. In fact, Clint asked Marvel to do things with him, such as helping her with her arithmetic and making up math games. He and Ezra were making a dollhouse for Mrs. Topp and Avaymaria, at Clint's suggestion. At night when he and Vince were on the boat, Clint sang what Marvel wanted to sing, and he often danced with her. Clint actually seemed to like Marvel, and deliberately sought out her company, and not because she was Jeanne's daughter. And like George Masters, Clint Hardin, too, was single, with no children of his own.

With an effort, Jeanne brought her attention back to George as he said, "Anyway, it does happen that I have plans for us tomorrow. I've found a charming eatery, and during the dinner hour it's perfectly respectable for ladies. It's German food, and if you like German food it's absolutely delicious."

"Is it Mütter Krause's?" Jeanne asked dully.

"Why, yes. Do you know it?"

"No. But I don't really want to go there, George. Not tomorrow, anyway."

THE FIRST OF AUGUST
,
far from being the height of the dry season as usual, had heavy rains. The storms weren't theatrical, just heavy steady downpours of warm rain. Both the Mississippi River and the Arkansas River turned into fast-flowing sepia-colored mud.

When Clint had first seen the map, he had said that the lower part of the Arkansas River looked like a squiggly green worm. That was actually pretty accurate. From Niccottoo to the mouth of the Arkansas where it flowed into the Mississippi, the kingpin was never straight up. Pilots had to carefully tend the wheel, making constant turns: some sharp, some meandering. Countless streams flowed into the lower Arkansas: some wide and fast, like Choctaw Creek, some so insignificant that they were unnamed, but all of them had to be carefully evaluated by the pilot in a rainy season. As a precaution, Jeanne had told Clint to stand by just in case she needed him to help her with the wheel again. She had realized that she wasn't the only pilot on the river that sometimes was defeated by heavy rains and the currents they created.

There were no less than four oxbows in this stretch. Oxbows were formed when a slow-moving river meandered off the main course to make a circle. If the narrow entrance of the circle closed off, and if the water was deep enough, the formation became an oxbow lake. On the lower Arkansas the water hadn't eroded the interiors of the circle enough to form lakes, so they were four circles of water just off the river, with sand in the middle. It was Noble's Oxbow that gave the
Helena Rose
trouble.

Jeanne rounded a bend she had named Lean-to Corner, because just on the left-hand side of the shore, in the middle of deep thick woods, was a tiny clearing with a three-sided lean-to shack. It was deserted, and obviously old, because the wood was bleached out by many years of sun to an oyster white. She glanced over to look at it, and noticed that it was covered with honeysuckle vines, for it had thousands of tiny yellow blooms, making the lean-to look like a bower. The clearing was carpeted with black-eyed Susans. She was thinking that she'd never noticed flowers there before, and thought everything might be blooming because of the rains they'd had for a week, when abruptly she heard a raspy crunching sound and the
Helena Rose
jarred to a stop.

The paddle wheel kept working, making a horrible grunting noise. She rang the attention bell and started to yell into the speaking tube, but Clint's voice sounded in the tube from the engine room. "I'm shutting her down, Jeanne!" Immediately the wheel slowed, then stopped. Jeanne ran downstairs.

She headed for the side door that led directly into the engine room, but Clint was already outside at the stern, and she joined him. The paddle wheel was only submerged into the water about four inches. "It's a sandbar," Jeanne groaned. "I knew it." She pointed to starboard. "That's Noble's Oxbow, it's got a very shallow entrance."

Clint nodded and began to walk along the rail, staring over the side. "Yeah, you can see the sand depositing right now. The middle of the boat's not even in water." Ezra and Vince came out, and they walked all around the boat. She was stuck, slightly nose-up, completely out of the water until about two-thirds down the boat's length. There, a crosscurrent ran from west to east, or port to starboard on the
Rose
. Clint jumped over the side and went to stand behind the paddle wheel. "Yeah, there's a little drop-off back here, and the current's pushing more sand to starboard. It might deepen enough right under the wheel in an hour or two that we might be able to back off."

"I hope so," Jeanne said miserably. "Once my father got stuck on a sandbar, and we were there for six days. This is all my fault, I should have seen it."

Ezra shook his head vigorously. "It ain't your fault, Cap'n Jeanne. I ain't never heard of Noble's Oxbow getting sandbarred up."

Clint climbed back on board and said to her, "When are you going to get it into your pretty head that everything this ol' river does isn't your fault? Might as well say the rain's your fault."

"But I was looking to port, at the flowers," Jeanne argued. "I might have seen the sandbar if I'd been looking over here."