Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

“You fancy the river, then?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Would you like to see the pilothouse?”

“I would.”

“I’ve got to go on watch: Come up with me now.”

WE CLIMBED UP to the highest part of the ship and entered the pilothouse, as elegant as any first-class parlor, with polished wood floors, gleaming spittoons, shiny brass railings, and a ship’s wheel six feet high: It was entirely surrounded by windows, and its sweeping view of the river, lit by lanterns beaming out over the waters, left one with the feeling of being up in a lighthouse tower.

As he relieved the assistant pilot and took the wheel, he spoke of his profession. Three times a month he made the round-trip between New Orleans and St. Louis, navigating steamships like the Arago up along some thirteen hundred miles of the sinuous Mississippi River. He showed me some charts that folded open in about eight different sections and described the course of the river, which hooked and turned off into wild half loops, curving everywhere, so that it resembled a long and writhing serpent or a medical illustration of human intestines.

“So many are the twists and turns of this river that what might be six hundred miles in a straight line turns into a thousand miles by boat: Now, piloting a steamboat is a very high art indeed. To learn, you’ve got to memorize the river’s eddies and shallows until they become as familiar as the back of your hand. Mainly you have to stay alert to its snags, bars, bottoms, and banks. The worst and most unsettling time is at night, particularly when your shift has come on a night of fog. You can go half crazy searching the darkness for some identifiable landmark — the docks of some town, the church steeple of another, the high woods of a cove — for on such nights, sometimes the sky and water meet in a thin, barely distinguishable line; and then you’ve got your cane-field fires to worry about, too, for their smoke can blow in, blinding the way.

“But I’m happy in my profession: I’m well paid, have no boss above me save for the captain, who leaves me alone,” he told me. “Before I became a pilot, my whole life had been about wandering from one place to another: I was about your age when I had gone out East, to Philadelphia and New York City, working for different newspapers as a printer. Spent a few years in those places — I’d never seen so many freed Negroes and foreigners in my life before, nor had I ever felt so entirely alone. Then came a time when I got homesick for the West again: On the way back, having read some government report about the Amazon region, I had hatched a scheme, in those days, of traveling to Brazil, in South America, to corner the market on the cocoa bean, a vegetable product of miraculous powers, the export of which I had thought would make me rich — how I would corner that market with only thirty dollars in my pocket was not of concern to my youthful mind. But as I was traveling downriver aboard a steamer, the Paul Jones , from Cincinnati, with New Orleans as my final destination — from there I was to set off for Brazil — I struck up a conversation with the steamboat pilot, a fellow named Horace Bixby, who filled my mind with all manner of possibilities about entering into that profession. I became eagerly interested — for you see, Henry, growing up as I did in a little town along the Mississippi, a place called Hannibal, Missouri, I had a dream: Like many boys at the time, I wanted to work aboard riverboats. Having made a good impression on this man — as you had with Mr. Stanley — this chance encounter changed all my plans, and in exchange for the first five hundred dollars of my wages I entered into a pilot’s apprenticeship that required of me the development of a prodigious memory for the river and its many tricks and deceptions. But by and by, I became an assistant pilot on various boats.…”

He seemed quite proud of his standing, and told me that he had always taken care to understand the nature of the ships at his command. On such journeys, he would not only know the exact tonnage of the craft itself but also learn the number of passengers and the weight of its cargo from its manifest, such elements being pertinent to many a split-second calculation, such as the amount of time it would take to avoid a coal or timber barge (such as the one I had been on) suddenly appearing out of the mist.

Mainly he had enjoyed the important responsibility of presiding over the destinies and safety of the rich cargoes and many human lives left in his charge; and he relished the grand respect accorded him on such ships. A luster of youthful accomplishment emanated from his being — a kind of light; his days, unfolding before him in the warmth and promise of youth, counted as the happiest he had experienced in his life once he’d left Hannibal, Missouri.

And, he told me, there were the glories of calm nights, when the stars were clear in the sky and the moon shone over the water and the river seemed to go on forever in its reflected light, such a fine scenario turning one’s thoughts to many fanciful speculations about God and destiny and Providence. The mystery of a universe spreading endlessly onward, as if emanating from one’s self, making the pilot feel grand and, at the same time, as if he were nothing at all. (The times I have since experienced such thoughts in Africa are innumerable.) I could not help but ask him if he believed in the Deity.

“Can’t say that I do, when I think about it. But on the right kind of day, when everything is wonderful, you can’t help but wish that you could thank somebody for it all. On the evidence of this river, and this sky, the fact that you and I can more or less think, talk, and walk around with our senses taking in a million things, I would say that you can’t help but wonder how it came about. But no, despite my righteous Presbyterian upbringing, the mystery of it all seems to me to have a physical explanation beyond our scope to understand. Though I sincerely wish it were otherwise. Since you are a Bible-reading man, I am assuming that my words do not fall easily on your ears; if so, I render my apologies, but I won’t be dishonest with you.”

Then he asked me, “How old are you, anyway, Henry?”

“Nineteen.”

“That was my brother’s age. He was a clerk, like you…. Your face is like his — eager for new experiences and wanting no more than a tad’s worth of earthly pleasures…. He was all innocence, the poor soul.”

And then, as if he wanted to unburden himself of some deep agony, he told me the following.

“About a year ago,” he began, “my younger brother, Henry, had been living up in Keokuk, Iowa, out of a job. He had been working for my older brother, Orion, who ran a press and published his own little newspaper there, the Keokuk Journal , a good-for-nothing operation. As this enterprise had folded, like everything else Orion ever worked on — he wasn’t much for business — I told Henry to come down to St. Louis to get into the steamboat business. I got him a job for no wages as a clerk — what we called a mud clerk — on a side-wheeler, the Pennsylvania , where I was a second pilot. I figured that starting out as a clerk, Henry, with time, would end up as a purser, a profession that he seemed well suited for. His was drudge work on the ship, but mainly he seemed to enjoy the river life. We’d made a few voyages up the Mississippi when…”

Then he dropped off into silence, the cigar in his mouth sending up clouds of smoke, as if he were meditating on the next thought. It was some minutes before he spoke again.

“We had made a number of trips up-and downriver, but our finest times were spent ashore, enjoying the local attractions — the circuses and theaters and minstrel shows of the major towns we visited; often at night we walked along the levees of such towns speaking quietly about the river life. I’d always inform him of the precautions he should take in the event of emergencies, to never panic and to keep his head at all times. Why I told him this I do not know, Henry, but I had had a premonition one night, in the form of a dream, in my sister’s home in St. Louis. I saw him laid out in a lead coffin, in one of my suits, with white and red roses placed upon his chest. Though I had dismissed it as a passing nightmare, I could not, as a brother who’d had such a dream, feel anything but concern for him whenever our steamboat entered into some difficulty — the jostling of the ship sometimes becoming violent with the swell of waves from passing boats or turbulent waters, bringing to mind the possibility of Henry being swept overboard. Often I found myself rushing down to the lower decks to find him. Generally I felt a great discomfort at having him out of my sight.