Tim Gautreaux - The Missing

On the day before he and August were to catch the train, Linda sidled up to him in the front room, catching his hand as he set the screen-door latch for the night and pushing him out onto the front porch.

“What?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to make sure you understood that things were all right. You know, as far as Lily’s concerned. August isn’t a problem. He can handle himself already.”

“I know we didn’t talk much.”

“Yeah, you just assumed things, as usual. Well, don’t worry, I think we can raise her. But she’s not normal.”

He looked over her head into the house. “What’s that mean?”

They could hear August talking to his sister. She squealed, and August went past the kitchen door with Lily riding his back.

“She’s kind of disconnected. I don’t know how to explain it. She won’t climb into my lap or give me a hug. Maybe it’s because she’s so smart. You can see it in her eyes. She drinks everything in. Did you see her in church on Sunday? I mean, she fell asleep during the sermon, but everything else she watched with those shiny little eyes. I taught her the Hail Mary twice, and now she knows it every word.”

He nodded and looked into the kitchen toward the sound of knees thumping the floor. “I’m trying not to teach her too much music. I’m scared she’ll get bored or just forget it. If I had to guess, I’d say she’ll be a lot better piano player than me.”

Linda put an arm around his waist. She seemed worried. “It’s like she’s waiting for something to happen.”

“Honey, she’s used to a lot of somethings happening to her.”

She shook her head. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe not.”

“I’ll bring in some money. I’ll make it work.”

“For her, you’ll have to.” She pulled open the screen and halfway into the room stopped and turned to him. “I know why you brought those kids into our home. Just don’t forget what they’ll mean for me.”

“Pretty lady, I won’t.”

“I want a house someday.”

“We’ll get one.”

“We don’t have a penny in savings.”

“We’ll get one, you’ll see.”

THE REST OF THE SEASON the boat ran town to town, a different landing each night. The dance floor was worn to a dull brown abrasion, the outside paint an occlusion of soot despite repeated scrubbings, the paddlewheel a barewood rack of planks washed to splinters. The old boat was waterlogged, rain-wracked, and out of true, its hogchains and turnbuckles bleeding rust and the hull warped out of its proper curve. The whole crew was as weary as a thin-walled boiler, waiting for payoff and bonus and release.

The weather turned cool early and the Ambassador began to tramp south, chasing the receding summer. In mid-September the crowds thinned out, except for the Friday and Saturday runs, and eventually, in October at Memphis, a cold front blasted in off the plains and all but killed the excursion business. Captain Stewart decided to try a few more towns below Memphis, and on a day of a big west wind, Mr. Brandywine was at the wheel fighting current as they started south. Mrs. Benton and Sam sat on the lazy bench watching whitecaps rise up in the channel. The boat was to land at a dock near the mouth of the Wolf River but wasn’t traveling where it was steered, commencing a dizzying wander. The pilothouse glazing rattled in the wind, and arching currents kicked up a dirty froth midriver.

Mr. Brandywine raised a hand for the whistle ring and blew a landing signal. “I’m going straight in with her back to the blow.” It was unusual for him to announce a maneuver, and Sam traded glances with Nellie Benton, wondering if the old man was hinting for advice. He watched the east bank come up in the bright midday. The pilot rang a stop bell and let the wind shove him along. Sam looked down at the water, figuring motion. Nellie Benton said nothing but seemed to be watching for wind direction in the trees. When Mr. Brandywine rang a backing bell, the pilothouse trembled as the paddlewheel grabbed water, and Sam knew he was trying to pull the boat parallel to the dock and let the breeze push him in. But then the wind came up hard, whistling through the rooftop gingerbread and popping the jackstaff flags. They were a hundred yards offshore with the stern swinging in hard. Mr. Brandywine rang a double gong, and after a moment the escape pipes barked up gouts of exhausting steam as the engines fought to draw the boat back from the wharf. Sam stood up. Steamboats were always underpowered things, and the wind treated them like box kites. Feeling one going out from under your feet, you knew that something terrible was going to happen in three or four minutes and that there was nothing anyone could do except drift along on what seemed like a county-sized piece of wood and wait for the bump that might break it open like a packing box, sending everyone, sleeping or awake, into the muddy current. Mr. Brandywine put the wheel over hard, but the wind was beating both the engines and the rudders, so he blew a warning whistle of four shorts, watched the dark dock pilings grow bigger in his port windows and said, over his shoulder, “Here’s the end of this season.” He rang the stop-engine bell right before the stern crashed into a cluster of pilings, but the signal was too late. A series of jolts shook the Ambassador and a spray of shattered lumber and long bolts flew up over the stern as the paddlewheel beat itself apart against the dock. The boat rocked severely shoreward, then leveled as the deckhands threw out lines. Later, Sam found out that the piano had rumbled over its roller chocks and chased a busboy a hundred feet down the dance floor.

By nightfall, the purser had paid off nearly everyone and asked the mates to stay an extra two days to tie up loose ends. Sam helped the pilots carry their luggage up to a taxi. He’d made several friendships on board, but he admired Nellie Benton and Rafe Brandywine the most, and felt that he was sending off legends.

The old man, wearing a bluewater uniform and bow tie, opened the door to the idling car and motioned for Mrs. Benton to get in. “Safest pilot goes first,” he said.

She gave him a startled look. “I don’t know about that, but it’s a nice thing to say.”

“Next year, if there is a next year, you hit the captain up for full wages, you hear?”

She slid into the backseat. “Come on and get in. You’ll miss your train back to Pennsylvania.”

He turned to Sam and told him, “You know, I admire the way you took in those Weller kids. I just wanted you to know that.”

“I kind of felt responsible.”

“Hell, we’re all responsible for something, but most of us don’t do a damn thing about it.” He got in, and Sam pushed the door shut.

As the hack pulled away, Nellie Benton called out, “Stay in easy water, son.”

RIDING QUIET and broken against the dock, the Ambassador soon lost its magic, and the smell of dust and dampness rose from its decks. The engineers dropped the fires under the boilers, and with all machinery wound down to a stop, Sam found things too quiet, and he began to think. For weeks the noise and music kept him from imagining what lay a hundred or so miles inland, somewhere in Arkansas. People he had a history with, so to speak, who owed him voices, touches, the generation of bloodline. In the near dark he leaned on the starboard rail, his mind boring westward.

The captain came up a staircase and stopped for a moment, as if surprised to see him outside. “The purser gave me your pay.” He stepped close and handed over a brown legal-size envelope. “You’ve stuck until the end of things this season, and you’ve had a rough road, Lucky, so there’s a fifty-dollar bonus.”