Mary Shura: Gabrielle

Once away from the house, Grandma Harper slid her hand in under Gabrielle’s arm. "I grieve to see you go, my child," she said quietly. "I grieve for myself, but most of all for David. I saw you at once as the girl who could be the making of him. But at what a cost to you! He is too like his father for my taste. But even if he were to change and be faithful and loyal to you, you would always hunger for those rivers. And who’s to blame you? Your place is on that water. Tell me something about that dark-eyed young man who watches you with such loving eyes."

Gabrielle, caught off guard, didn’t know what to say. "He’s very talented but you are mistaken about the loving eyes. He really can’t stand me, and makes no secret of it."

The old woman’s laugh was merry. "How can you be so wise and still so innocent? There is no better testament to his love than that he sat all through breakfast wishing my grandson would drop dead."

At Gabrielle’s shocked expression, Grandma Harper patted her arm. "Time will loosen his tongue. And I am sure he will not make of you what David’s father made of my daughter—a bitter, lonely woman thrown on the charity of her own family."

Her voice changed as she handed Gabrielle a pair of shears from her pocket. "Now cut a little of that first bush and tie it with this string. This is rosemary… which is also for remembrance." Gabrielle was startled to see Grandma Harper’s eyes moist with tears.

David insisted on carrying Gabrielle’s trunk to the buggy without help. She walked along beside him, thanking him again for the hospitality he and his family had shown her.

"You know that when you came I intended you to stay with me forever," he told her softly. "I must have been mad to hope that you might learn to love me as I do you." He paused and looked at her in that intent way that almost frightened her. "We could try again, you know. Granny, particularly, would welcome you with open arms. She doesn’t often take to people the way she did to you."

With her head still full of Grandma Harper’s amazing words, Gabrielle listened to David thoughtfully. He was still as loving as always, but with a new hesitation. Behind his words she heard more than he had meant her to hear. His hopes were in the past and had not been realized. His were the words of a disappointed suitor a little bit relieved to be free of a difficult situation.

"We will both have our memories," she told him. He nodded and looked at her. She had an eerie feeling that she knew what he was seeing as his eyes held hers. He had forgotten again that she was an ordinary girl with a mind of her own and her heart pledged to the river. In his eyes she was once more a butterfly, that floating dream of a girl high in the dappled shadow of an oak grove, a shadowy lie in a dream from which he might never awaken now. Gabrielle felt a moment’s pity for Mollie Thompson. It was almost impossible to compete with a dream. Mollie would have her work cut out for her.

For the first few miles they traveled downriver, Flossie chattered like the catbird in the gooseberry bushes. She was full of gossip, tidbits of news from old friends they had met, funny things that had happened on board, and how proud Tom Luce had been to catch a fish that reached from his fingertips clear to his elbow. When Flossie fell silent, Gabrielle glanced back and realized she had dropped off to sleep.

Stephen laughed softly. "I wonder that she lasted this long. But she’s a game one. She stayed awake all the way up here from nervousness about the horse. When I teased her about it, she told me that a watched horse never bolts. I guess having two farmers in the buggy made her feel more relaxed."

"Two farmers?" Gabrielle asked. Then, remembering his teasing earlier, she asked, "Don’t tell me you were a farmer, too?"

"What else?" he said, smiling over at her. Why did she keep remembering what both David and his grandmother had said about Stephen’s feeling for her? She was glad he looked back at the road before the color flushed into her face.

"You’ve heard a half dozen stories like mine," he went on. "I was raised just out of Natchez on a plantation that bordered the Mississippi. I never saw a plume of smoke rise from a steamboat on that river that I didn’t drop my plow or my cotton sack and run for the riverbank. I hated the eternal dryness of land as much as I hated the muddy rains. I despised the way the heat rose in waves from the baked earth. I even hated the smell of the cotton bolls splitting open in the fields, never mind that was where our money came from. I didn’t care how I got to be a riverman. I only wanted the dust of land off my feet."

"So how did you do that?" she asked.

"The hard way," he said. "When I was a little past twelve, I talked a captain into taking me on as a deckhand for five dollars a week plus board. The most exciting thing I ever did was stand at the end of a gangplank to throw a coil of rope over a post to secure the boat. But I worked at studying the river until I got to be a cub pilot the year I was fifteen. I might have done that forever if I hadn’t seen my first showboat. That hooked me good! I nearly killed myself that next year learning gymnastics and then dancing. I was sixteen—your age, I guess—when I got my first job on a showboat."

"But you sing, too," Gabrielle reminded him.

He laughed. "Monkey see, monkey do! Once it’s in your blood, it’s there to stay. I even know enough magic tricks to be able to help the captain during his act."

Gabrielle nodded, but his words brought a pang. She hadn’t even thought to wonder who had taken her place in the magic act.

The miles went easily. They passed dusty groves of deep green and orchards like the one whose chiggers still itched when she got too warm. They passed pastures of cattle, and fields where farmers worked at harvesting. Stephen was full of good river stories, and he always told them with himself as the butt of the joke. This habit reminded her of her father, who had always been big enough to admit publicly that he was capable of making mistakes.

When her father had hired Stephen DuBois, she had been delighted. He was young like herself. At last she would have a young friend. For the first time since those disappointing weeks after he came aboard, that hope came back.

"So this is what you want to do all your life?" she asked him.

He looked at her in surprise. "Not altogether," he told her. "One day I mean to own a showboat of my very own."

"Have you ever talked about this with my father?" she asked.

He grinned over at her, nodding. "The captain has given me lots of encouragement. He just the same as told me he was working toward expanding and running two boats on the rivers. He showed me the plans and said you knew them like the back of your hand. He told me that if I learned the ropes and passed the exam for a pilot’s license, maybe he’d have a boat for me himself."

"I intend to get a pilot’s license, too," she told him.

He turned to study her thoughtfully. "Can a girl do that?" he asked.

She grinned. "Father and I think we might be able to pull it off. We studied the rules. They don’t say a girl can, but neither do they say she can’t."

He laughed warmly as Flossie spoke sleepily from the backseat. "I wouldn’t want to suggest that the conversation was dry up there in front, but I would give my best ruffled petticoat for a cold drink."

"I’ve seen that petticoat, Stephen." Gabrielle laughed. "Let’s find a village or something fast before she lowers her bid."

He smiled and looked over at her, his dark eyes wondrously gentle. "As good as done," he told her. "From the way the farmhouses have been getting closer together, I’d guess you could figure on winning a new petticoat in less than a half hour."