Houseboat Girl (4 page)

The deckhands all came to look. They acted as if they had never seen a houseboat before. They called and waved and the children waved back.

“Well, boys,” called Mama, “how do you like this stylish outfit of ours?”

“Where you goin’?” called Dan. “Stop and take me with you.”

“What you cookin’?” called Milly. “I smell something good.”

“They holler just as if they know us,” said Patsy, “but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.”

Patsy thought of the friends she had left behind. What friends could a girl make on the river? Only the deckhands on a passing towboat who waved and shouted and then were gone. Deckhands who would never be seen again!

“When those big tows come along, it worries me,” said Mama, “because I don’t swim and I know Daddy couldn’t save all of us.”

“Who’s fallin’ in?” Milly laughed. “Remember I can swim, too.”

Milly went around in shirt and jeans like a boy, except for the earrings in her ears. She tied her hair back with a string, except when she curled it. She liked to boss the younger children.

“Watch out, kids!” she called. “The waves are coming.”

Abe Foster was ready. He steered the houseboat at an angle, to meet the oncoming waves. Up and down rocked the houseboat, while the children staggered about, trying to keep their balance. Loud thumps could be heard indoors, followed by cries from Mama. A lamp slid off a shelf and some dishes fell. A chair was knocked over.

Then the towboat, moving swiftly, passed around a bend and was gone.

Suddenly a hen began to cackle close at hand. Patsy jumped up. Her chickens! She had forgotten all about them. She ran quickly and jumped over to the cabin boat. She fed and watered her pets and talked to them for a while. She promised them a run on the river bank whenever Daddy tied up for the night.

She came back and slumped on the couch again. Bunny and Dan started a game of jacks on the floor. The houseboat had straight going now for seven miles. The river was wide and flowed northwest to the Joppa lights.

Patsy felt tired and lazy, for there was nothing to do. No games to play, no place to go. No friends to see—nobody but her own family. She was cut off from everything and everybody. She watched the clouds floating by overhead. Now and then she saw a bird on the wing. Then she must have dozed off to sleep. After a time she was roused by Dan’s shouts.

“The locks! We’re coming to the dam and the locks!” This must be Lock and Dam No. 53 above Olmstead. That meant they had passed Joppa already. The river was very wide here. There were mussel beds between Joppa and Grand Chain, and a good many mussel diggers were out. Their boats, with brails hung close with hooked lines, were scattered out over the river, outside the channel.

Mama came out on the porch and sat down. She took Bunny on her lap.

“No more shell digging for Daddy,” she said. “I’m glad of that.”

“But how will he make money then?” asked Patsy. “To buy food for us to eat and clothes to wear?”

“Don’t you worry,” said Mama. “Your daddy’s the best fisherman on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers! We’ll make out all right. Then Milly was out front pointing and shouting to Daddy back in the cabin boat. They were coming close to the locks. Patsy jumped up to see. Going through the locks was exciting. The gates had already been opened. Patsy heard the lock men shouting to Daddy. They told him how many feet the drop to the lower level would be. It was a long slow process getting Daddy’s outfit in and the gates closed behind. Then the drop began. Daddy’s motor was shut off, and it was very quiet in the lock chamber. Down they went, with the walls rising higher and higher on both sides. It was like going down in an elevator.

“Oh, boy! This is fun!” cried Patsy.

But Bunny got scared. She ran indoors and hid under Mama’s bed, crying. Patsy went to coax her out, but she would not come.

Then at last, outside, the lower gates began to open, and they could see the lower level of the river ahead. Daddy started his motor and began pushing the houseboat out through the gates.

“Come on out, Bunny,” coaxed Patsy. “We’re through the locks now.”

Bunny came and hid her face in Mama’s apron. “I couldn’t see anything under the bed,” she said.

“Under the bed is a good safe place to hide.” Mama patted the little girl on the back. “I don’t like the locks, either,” she said.

After the lock excitement there was nothing much to see. The banks on both sides were low and far away. There were no towns on the Kentucky side from Paducah all the way to the Mississippi River.

The day wore slowly on. A Diesel towboat, hauling coal from West Virginia, caught up with the houseboat and went on ahead. Mama cooked dinner and then Bunny and Dan took naps. Patsy got tired of the kitten, found Dan’s harmonica and played for a while. Mama took up a batch of mending. Milly came in, complaining of a headache.

Patsy decided to go fishing. She climbed up on the houseboat roof and brought down a pole and line. She baited her hook with a piece of fat. Then she sat down on the porch floor and threw out her line. But nothing happened. No fish came to bite. All at once her fish pole fell out of her hand into the water. It floated beside the hull. Patsy held onto the porch post with her hand, leaned out and stretched her leg out over the water toward the pole.

“Oh Patsy!
Don’t!”
called Mama. “Don’t do that!”

But the girl had already caught the fish pole between her bare toes and was hauling it up on deck.

“What’s the matter?” she asked her mother.

“Oh, you make me so nervous,” said Mama. “Looks as if you’re just determined to fall in!”

“Are there no fish at all in this old river?” asked Patsy.

“Too many dams on the Ohio and too little current,” said Mama. “Wait till we get to the Mississippi. It’s plumb full of catfish and scale fish, too.”

“When will we get there?” asked Patsy. To her surprise, she found a large jumping fish on her line.

“Tomorrow maybe,” said Mama.

“Where are we going to stay tonight?” asked Patsy.

“At Mound City,” said Mama. “We’ll go visit Uncle Fred this evenin’. Can’t pass by with Uncle Fred lookin’ for us.”

The sun was already setting when the Fosters reached Mound City, Illinois, a real river town with an active boatways on the water front. Daddy tied up in a small cove to one side. He came in the kitchen to wash the oil and grease off his hands and face, and to change his clothes.

The minute the boat stopped, the children rushed to the bank. It seemed good to be on land again. “You’d think they’d just crossed the ocean,” said Mama.

Patsy put a plank from the cabin boat to the bank. She shooed her chickens out of their coops and up on land. But it was getting dark and they did not want to go. So she sprinkled corn on the plank to coax them back in again. They seemed to know that the coop was their home. They did not like the strange river bank.

Then Uncle Fred was there with his loud booming voice. He took all the Fosters in his car to his house up in town. They ate supper at Uncle Fred’s, played games for an hour with the cousins, and then Uncle Fred brought them back again.

Already the houseboat had begun to seem like home. Soon they were all asleep in their beds, Tom, the cat, curled up at Patsy’s feet. The river water lapped lazily around the hull and the moon rose over the wide expanse of the Ohio River. All was peace and quiet in the Foster houseboat.

The next morning Patsy was up early. She put on a T-shirt and blue jeans and went out to the cabin boat. She talked to Daddy while he tinkered with the motor.

“It won’t take long to get to Cairo,” said Daddy. “Then we’ll be on the Mississippi.”

“That’s a mean old river, I guess,” said Patsy.

“Everybody says so,” answered Daddy with a laugh, “but it’s not so bad when you know it. There are plenty of things to cause trouble—wind, pile dikes, tricky currents, snags and sand bars. And there’s nothing worse than meeting a tow in a tight bend. The trouble with that old river is, it wiggles too much!”

Patsy laughed. She felt safe with Daddy.

Daddy could not read a book, because he had never been to school. But he could “read” the river like a book. Born in Kentucky, he had lived on the river all his life. He knew every bend and sand bar and buoy and navigation light. He knew what every riffle, eddy or “slick” meant before he came to it. He knew all the crossings without need of the buoys and he never used a map.

“Will we stop at Cairo, Daddy?” asked Patsy.

“We might go to the Boat Store,” said Daddy. “I need more rope and other supplies.”

Suddenly Patsy heard a motorboat coming. Around the bend a man appeared in an outboard johnboat. Above the sound of the motor, his loud whistling could be heard. Daddy stopped work and looked up.

“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” he said. “If that’s not Whistling Dick, I’ll jump in the river. I’d know his whistling a mile off.”

The next minute the two men were shaking hands. The man was not a stranger at all, but an old friend of the Fosters. He had a cheerful smile and wore his britches with the legs rolled up. He patted Patsy on the back and came over to the houseboat for breakfast. Mama was glad to see him, too.

“Dick, you’re a part of the scenery,” said Mama. “Every time we go up or down the river, we see you somewhere.”

“And this is Little Abe,” said Whistling Dick. “A chip off the old block, I can see.”

“Are you the man that never stops whistling?” asked Dan.

Whistling Dick laughed. “Yes, Little Abe,” he said, “my whistle never runs dry. When I get tired of whistling, I sing.” He started singing
Pop Goes the Weasel
in a loud voice.

Dan began to march around the table, trying to whistle the tune.

“Are you fixin’ to go shelling, Dick?” asked Abe Foster.

“Yep,” said Whistling Dick. “I been on the Cumberland all winter. Got my houseboat beached up there. But the river will soon be gettin’ low and there’s no fish left in it. So in the summer I always come over to Illinois. I got me a little cabin back up here on the river bank, with a cooking vat and some brails and hooks. I’ll soon be selling mussel shells."”

“You can have ’em all, and the pearls, too,” said Abe Foster. “I’m tired of that job. Luggin’ them heavy shells up the river bank like to broke my back. We’re off down river now on a summer vacation. There’s still plenty of catfish left in the Mississippi!”

“Watch out, catfish!” cried Whistling Dick. “Big Abe Foster’s coming!”

The men began to brag about their big hauls of fish. Patsy wondered who was the better fisherman, her father or Whistling Dick. Soon he said he had to be going. Patsy held the cat in her arms as she watched him get in his boat. She waved good-bye and could hear his cheery whistle long after he was out of sight.

“Daddy says we might stop at Cairo,” said Patsy.

“Good!” said Milly. “We’ll go uptown and do some shopping. I want to get me a pair of high-heeled shoes.”

“High heels?” Mama laughed. “On the river you’ll all go barefoot.”

Soon the houseboat was in the river again. Now there was something to look forward to—the big city of Cairo. Everybody called it Ka-ro, not Ki-ro like the capital of Egypt. It seemed a long time since the Fosters had left River City, a long time since Patsy had left her friends. She had other things to think about now.