Mary Shura: Gabrielle

"Nobody on this river would take on that job," he said. "Nobody but your father, that is. Any ordinary man would have yanked you back on this boat where you belong. Flossie is a fool to put up with doing your work as well as her own."

The mention of Flossie reminded her of the fresh washing hanging behind her. And already she could smell the rich aroma of food rising from the galley. Before she could think of a reply, he had turned and walked away, his footsteps crisp with disapproval.

Flossie was bent over the open oven door, her flaming hair drawn back with a sea-green cotton scarf. She smiled up at Gabrielle, her cheeks scarlet from the oven’s heat. "How do you like the looks of those?" she asked proudly.

"Those" were three fat hens spilling brown masses of toasted cornbread dressing onto the long black roaster. The scent of sage and onion made Gabrielle suddenly ravenous. "Marvelous!" she said. "And they smell delicious."

"I hope I seasoned that dressing enough," Flossie frowned. "I bought the hens from a farmer lady for fifteen cents apiece. She had butter, too, and sold me a ham for only a dollar."

Another stab of guilt. Gabrielle always went shopping with Flossie and helped her carry the supplies home. "Flossie, I feel terrible about your doing all this work alone. How can I ever make it up to you ?"

Flossie smiled, closed the oven, and sat down on the other end of the bench. "I’ve had fun thinking about you working on your act. How has it been going?"

"Wonderfully," Gabrielle breathed, almost in a whisper. "I’m really ready. I was hoping to show Father today, but he got ready to leave too fast."

Flossie’s eyes sparkled with excitement. "I want to see, too."

"Father has to approve it before I do it on the boat," Gabrielle told her. "And until then, it’s still a secret.".

"Do you suppose we could start on the costume?" Flossie asked.

Gabrielle hesitated. When would she ever get another chance to let her father see her act? "Maybe it’s too soon. Father will never let me try my act over a wooden floor until he sees me try in a safe place."

Flossie put her arm across Gabrielle’s shoulder. "Everything has its time. Your father didn’t plan a show tonight because of the late start and the difficulty of getting over to the Illinois side in this current. It’s like an extra vacation. But it’s almost time to have supper. You might run down and see how you like the handbills for the next show."

Suddenly Gabrielle needed to tell someone about the boy in the woods. "Listen, Flossie," she began, her voice low. "I met somebody there on the land."

Flossie smiled warmly at her. "I know you did. That woman at the farmhouse where I bought the chickens and ham just raved on about what a pretty little thing you are and what a sweet way you have about you."

Someone was at the door. With her luck, Gabrielle thought, it would probably be Stephen DuBois. She could only nod at Flossie before she escaped.

When Gabrielle was little, Bony Rogers had seemed like the oldest man in the world to her. Later, when she asked him his age, he gave her an answer she had to look up. "Halley’s Comet came over the year I was born," he told her. "With Stonewall Jackson sitting in the White House as President." Since that had to be 1835, Bony was only forty-five now, even though he was as gray as summer dust and weighed little more than a boy.

Bony was working the old printing press in the corner of the dining room under the stage. Handbills were spread around him for the ink to dry while he pulled the bar forward over another sheet. "Hi, Purty," he said, grinning up at her. "You’ve been scarce as hens' teeth around here lately."

She sat down beside him and picked up a handbill. "I’m back now," she told him. "Let’s see what you’re cooking up for us."

Everybody on the boat did a number of different jobs and her father was no exception. Captain Prentice planned the programs for the shows as well as leading the band and performing as a magician and an actor.

The headline on the handbill was in giant letters: THRILLING EVENING OF ENTERTAINMENT ! Gabrielle glanced over the program:

LEGERDEMAIN, SLEIGHT OF HAND

AND MAGIC ! starring Captain Joshua Prentice assisted by Miss Gabrielle.

COMIC SONGS AND DANCES : Pud Swallow and Stephen DuBois.

"This act with Pud and DuBois is new," she told Bony.

He nodded. "Right good they are, too," he said. "I watched them practice during the rains."

The play was The Lying Valet , followed by Stephen’s acrobatic display, then a love song by Miss Gabrielle, the "Sweetest Soubrette on the Stream."

"Bony!" she cried in protest. " Sweetest Soubrette on the Stream ?"

He flushed and ducked his head. "A man is entitled to his own opinion, even in print."

She rose and smiled down at him. "I suppose I will be carrying that awful armful of fake roses as usual."

He nodded. "Flossie tried to find you some fresh ones, but it’s too late in the season. That’s all right. They seem the same as fresh once you start singing."

Although the baked chicken and dressing were as good as they had smelled, Gabrielle couldn’t get very many bites to go down. For the first time she could remember, she didn’t feel a part of the laughing and jesting that went on around the table. She caught Flossie’s eyes on her and began eating again so the meal would be over and she could get back up on deck.

Maybe everything seemed strange because it was so rare to have an evening moving down the river without a performance. Gabrielle went to the rail of the Texas deck to watch the Missouri landscape slip by. The green of the wooded shore deepened to a rich charcoal color after sunset. Against the ragged stripes of deep red and orange three hawks swayed in the air, their color lost in shadow. Once the boat was in the current, the motor of the tug shut off, letting the Levee Princess float without aid. In that silence, the sounds from the shore overwhelmed the lap of the water. Frogs and peepers battled in chorus against the endless sawing of the cicadas. Then fireflies began to wink in the darkness, high and then low, as if they were signaling.

Where did David Wesley live? Probably in a farmhouse, maybe like the one where she had bought the bacon—a farmhouse with a fragrant kitchen and a spotted cow in the barn lot behind. Were "lightning bugs," as her father called them, blooming in the pastures around David’s house? Was his mind with her on the river as hers was with him?

Behind her the men’s voices rumbled in talk. Politics, always politics, along with weather and the price of things. Everybody wondered how it would work when they moved the capital of Louisiana from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. Judd Harper’s voice deepened with disapproval as he complained about the political conventions just past. "Too many political parties," he said. "Splitting the vote four ways makes it hard for a good man to get nominated."

"You might as well not count that Prohibition Party," Tom Luce, the calliope player, put in. "It’ll come down to Republicans and Democrats again when the votes get counted."

"Like anybody knows who those candidates are," Flossie’s husband scoffed. "James A. Garfield, indeed! Any man it takes thirty-seven votes to nominate has to be a nobody."

Captain Prentice stirred in his chair. "General Grant was a somebody," he pointed out. "He couldn’t have done much worse as President if he had taken lessons."

Politics, always politics!

Gabrielle turned and went to her own cabin. She lay a long time in the darkness, thinking. She remembered David’s words exactly: "The minute I saw you I knew I had been waiting for just that moment my whole life."

That was the most romantic thing she had ever heard in her entire life, even in a novel.