Mary Shura: Gabrielle

The following day was just like a hundred before it. After the three o’clock wakening, the Levee Princess started downstream at four, cutting carefully toward the Illinois side. Breakfast was served at ten to give everyone a chance to dress for the parade. About ten minutes before the Levee Princess

reached the landing marked on the captain’s map, Tom Luce went up to the calliope and began to play.

When the showboat edged into the stand about eleven o’clock, Gabrielle realized this was more than a simple boat dock. The buildings of the small Illinois town were visible down the path that led to the dock, and a small crowd had already formed on the beach as Captain Prentice ordered the gangplank let down and the boat tied up.

As director, Captain Prentice, in full costume, led the band down the gangplank and along the path that led to town. Only Pud Swallow and Stephen DuBois didn’t play instruments. Both men, wearing striped clown regalia, did handstands and flips first in front of, and then following, the band. Dust rose from the unfinished street and dogs, frantic from the noise, lunged at the marchers' heels, barking wildly. A troop of barefooted boys in knee pants followed the dogs, shouting and mimicking the instruments in the band.

At the corner by the feed store, the band assembled for a free concert, during which Pud and Stephen cavorted through the crowd, handing out the printed programs. When a portly man with a handlebar mustache approached her father, Gabrielle guessed him to be the mayor. He would get free tickets for himself and his entire family.

The last selection of the free concert program was "Turkey in the Straw." As Bony Rogers waggled his fiddle bow into the second chorus, a group of men pushed forward a young man of about twenty.

"You call that fiddling?" one of the men shouted. "Zach here could out-fiddle you with half the strings of his bow broke off."

"Fiddling contest!" someone shouted from the crowd.

Gabrielle ducked her head to hide a grin. Bony couldn’t turn down the contest, but he would worry himself into a rag before fiddling the man down during the evening performance. He’d never been bested on the river yet. The closest he had come anywhere was once in Nashville, Tennessee, where the fiddlers had to draw straws to see who took him on.

"Yes or no," the man insisted. "Dare you face our Zach?"

Bony solemnly stuck his fiddle under his arm and reached out to shake the young man’s hand.

"Show starts at seven," Captain Prentice called. "Don’t be late. There’s a fresh-minted gold piece for the winner of the fiddling contest."

As the cast walked back to the showboat with the army of boys still cavorting behind them, Gabrielle was thoughtful. Generally she didn’t pay that much attention to land people. That day had been different. She had studied the faces of the young men in the crowd, wishing they were on David Wesley’s side of the river. Not only was David not there, but not a single young man she had seen could hold a candle to his tall, fair good looks.

And it wasn’t only David’s looks. She loved the deep quietness of his voice and the intent way he had looked at her, as if afraid he would forget. She caught Stephen’s dark eyes watching her as she mounted the gangplank and thought, with a stab of pain, of the almost reverent gentleness in David’s face when it had been so close to her own.

Bony had stopped by the post office to pick up the mail, catching up with everyone as the gangplank was about to be lifted. As the members of the cast clustered about him to see if any of the letters were for them, Gabrielle slipped off to her own cabin.

Afternoons were free time. The men either amused themselves by fishing from the sunny side of the boat or going off to hunt ashore. Gabrielle and Flossie usually settled together on the cool side of the deck and read, sewed, or just talked quietly until time to get dinner ready to serve at four o’clock.

Gabrielle didn’t even go out on deck. She lay in her pantaloons and camisole in the hot cabin, staring at the uneven boards of the ceiling. Was this how she was going to spend the rest, of her life, searching the crowds that gathered in the towns along the rivers, looking for David Wesley’s face?

She wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come.

Not until the dinner was cleared away and she was going off to dress for the evening show did Gabrielle even think to ask her father what song he wanted her to sing.

He laid his arm across her shoulder and smiled in a way that told her he was thinking of her mother. "I’m hungry to hear you sing Blue Sky, Still Water, " he told her. That was his favorite of the songs her mother had written.

She leaned and dropped a kiss on his head. "Especially for you," she whispered.

As always, the evening became a noisy blur when the gangplank was raised at seven and crowds surged in. Whole families sat together, fussing over who sat by whom. Self-conscious young boys bought candy their girls didn’t want from Bony, who passed up and down the aisle calling his wares at ten cents a bag. Young mothers rocked their restless babies in the flimsy straight chairs, trying to settle them down before the band struck up.

Gabrielle was there, but not there. She felt strangely withdrawn as if she was watching the performance from a great distance.

Her father got a rousing hand with his magic tricks, as usual. The fiddling contest threatened to go on forever before young Zach finally put his bow down with a rubbery arm, and his face streaming with sweat. The whole cast cheered him back to his seat.

The new act Pud and Stephen had prepared stiffened her to attention in her seat. They were good, really good together. They started dancing seriously only to pick up speed until the dance turned into an acrobatic free-for-all that left both of them flat and seemingly dead on the floor. Their comic song, "The Ballad of the Lost Hawg," was almost as good. Pud sang his part straight with tears running down his face, while Stephen pantomimed the fearful search and final sad ending. Gabrielle wiped tears of laughter from her eyes before they were through.

All right, Stephen was talented. She would concede that. He was rude and impossible and insolent, but talented.

For her solo, Gabrielle changed into a pale blue dress with a wide ruffled collar of lace framing her face. She walked slowly to center stage, carrying the awful artificial roses in her arms. She searched the audience a moment with her eyes and began. Something strange happened inside her as she sang the opening bars:

The song she had sung since she was a child became more than words she had memorized to a plaintive tune. This was a cry from her mother’s heart, a cry of love and longing, the same painful longing she had felt ever since she had run away from David Wesley.

She was unconscious of the sea of silent faces until the final bars. Then she bent in a deep bow, forcing herself to smile over the armful of garish roses.

For a moment it seemed as if all time stood still. Not a single pair of hands rose to clap. Many of the faces looking back at hers were shining with tears, and in the doorway, Stephen DuBois was staring at her as if she had grown a second head. She swallowed hard. What had she done? Had she ruined the show for everyone with her crazy mood? Then a storm of applause broke loose in the room. Several people rose to their feet. A lot of them blew their noses loudly while they stamped their approval. She bowed again and again as she fled to the side of the stage to escape.

The show was finally over at ten o’clock, with the grand finale bringing everybody to their feet.