The River Queen (5 page)

We drift by beaches and recreational areas. At Mile 689 Jerry tells me that Wild Kat Landing once had a two-horsepower ferry going from here to Brownsville and that meant “two real hay burners”—two draft horses—turning the wheel. As we round Turtle Island, the cliffs of Minnesota recede. A flock of white pelicans perches on an exposed rock, along with some cormorants. There isn't a soul on the river as it opens wide, and I cannot see its banks.

Houses rise high upon the cliffs, looming there. I see no access roads. No town for miles. As we chug along at a clip of 8.2 miles per hour, Jerry shows me how to read the miles off the daymarkers that dot the banks. “Okay,” Jerry says, “take your binoculars and read those numbers there.”

I scan the water and I give him the river mile off our next daymarker. It's 686.1. Jerry flips through the thick, bound set of Army Corps of Engineers navigational maps and he shows me that this puts us at Henning Light Daymark at the end of Turtle Island. We will use these daymarkers to figure out our position as we travel down the main channel. As we pass between the buoys, he teaches me the simple adage that I learn like a nursery rhyme: “Red Right Returning.”

This means that as we head upstream the red buoy is to starboard. Going downstream, which is what I plan to be doing all the way down the Mississippi, red is to port. Given that I am left-handed and somewhat directionally challenged, this seems simple enough. “Of course,” Jerry warns, “the buoys could shift in a storm or the Army Corps of Engineers could've missed a spot they had to dredge and you'll run aground. But basically, you want to stay between the buoys.”

As he's talking, I'm reading the Army Corps of Engineers disclaimers that appear on our navigational maps. “Buoy positions represented on these charts are approximate and subject to change depending on river stages and channel obstructions.” And, if that doesn't inspire confidence, “Area in river that generally meets project depth dimensions (i.e. 9 feet or greater) is subject to change as a result of scour or deposition in the river.” In other words there are no guarantees that we are going to travel safely. And should we run into trouble, we are advised to contact the office of the United States Coast Guard at a phone number in New Orleans.

Jerry's maneuvering the boat, his eyes set on the river ahead. “I was out on the river once down near Prairie du Chien,” Jerry says as I'm searching for daymarkers and buoys, “and I saw this guy in a cruiser.” He chuckles to himself. “He was zipping along at a wide part of the river and the buoys were set up so you had to go way west before you could come back east.”

I'm watching how he turns the wheel. He's got his eyes set far in the distance at something I can't see. “Red buoy at eleven o'clock,” Jerry says, pointing. I'm starting to see the world as a gigantic time device.

“I see it,” I say.

“So I'm following the buoys,” Jerry goes on, “but this guy in the cruiser, he takes this shortcut right through the middle and I think to myself, ‘God, I wish I knew this channel well enough to take the shortcuts like he does' and then all of a sudden I hear this loud splash and I see that the cruiser has landed flat on a sandbar and he's stuck there.”

I put down my binoculars. “What'd you do?”

“I would have gone to help, but I'd have gotten stuck there myself. I called the next lock and dam and told him where the guy was. I have no idea how long he sat. I'm sure they had to get a tow to pull him off.”

Jerry has a good laugh over this as he points out half a dozen white pelicans resting on another sandbar. “So,” he says, “the moral of this story is stay between the buoys.”

“Got it,” I reply. At Mile 679 we approach our first lock—Genoa Lock and Dam 8. The town of Genoa was once called Bad Axe Landing (and indeed at least four daymarkers south of Genoa are called Bad Axe), but in 1869 a group of homesick Italian immigrants renamed this place Genoa after their hometown. Other than its name, at least from the river, I don't see anything Italian.

Jerry speaks with authority into his marine radio. “Lockmaster, this is pleasure craft,
Friend Ship,
requesting lockage.” A voice replies that seems to be coming from outer space.

Jerry repeats, “This is pleasure craft
Friend Ship,
requesting lockage.” Despite my protests Jerry has named our boat
Friend Ship.
I'd have preferred
Reckless Abandon,
but
Friend Ship
it is.
River Queen,
he informed me, is just her brand name. He has made a sign with nautical waterproof letters—
FRIEND SHIP
—and stuck it on the bow of the flybridge. But she's still the
River Queen
to me.

The lockmaster answers our call. “
Friend Ship,
we're opening the gates. Come on through.”

It wasn't long after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 that the Mississippi River got itself linked to America's sense of itself as a nation and its manifest destiny. Over the next hundred years the need to control the river rather than let it flow as nature intended became more and more apparent. In 1917 an act of Congress put the management of the river under the control of the Secretary of War, and it was considered military territory.

River towns grew and with them factories, commerce, and transportation. The Mississippi was the main artery through which all of this had to flow, and it was up to the Army Corps of Engineers to manage this. The problems of the upper Mississippi were different from those of the lower. The lower river was deeper and more narrow. It tended to build up speed, which also deepens its channel. The upper river had other problems. It was wide and its bottom unpredictable. Steamboats and barges easily caught a snag and sank.

If the lower Mississippi needed its levees, the upper required locks and dams. In 1930 the United States Congress authorized the building of the lock and dam system on the upper Mississippi River. Between 1934 and 1938 twenty-seven were built. Their purpose was not flood control, but navigability. The locks and dams provide a water stairway that descends if you are going downstream, or rises if you are going upstream, a total of 417 feet. The goal is to keep the main channel of the river at a consistent depth of nine feet.

Now we are coming to my first lock and dam. I am as excited as a kid going through a tollbooth for the first time with an E-ZPass. “Tell me what to do,” I ask Jerry as eager as I can be.

Jerry hands me a short stick and a pair of blue vinyl gloves that resemble the feet of blue-footed boobies. He explains that my job, along with Tom, is to hold the line that the lockmaster will drop, and keep us from smashing into the cement wall as we drop the normal ten feet. I'll want the gloves, he says, for when I have to push off the wall. “It can get kinda scummy,” he says.

“River scum,” Tom says, holding up his paws. “I bathe in it.”

“I'm sure you do,” I tell him.

“Take this line, Mary,” Jerry says, handing it to me. “Wrap it once around the railing, then hold it firm. Don't tie it to the railing. Tommy, you remember what happened to that woman up in Trempealeau at Lock and Dam 6?”

“Oh, yeah,” Tom says. His voice has an ominous ring. “I remember.”

“What happened?”

“Well, she tied up the boat and didn't hold the line and as the water level dropped,” Jerry tells me, “the boat was yanked out of the water and she panicked and grabbed a machete to cut the line and managed to slit her own throat.”

I'm shaking my head, holding the line more loosely now, poking at the lock wall with my stick. “You're making that up.”

“Naw,” Tom says, “I heard it too.”

“Yeah, she died,” Jerry says, deadpan as always. “So just wrap the line loosely and hold the slack. And don't wrap it around your wrist.” As Jerry shows me how to hold the line, I see for the first time that he is missing the tops of three fingers on his right hand.

Tom gives me a nod. “Oh, you don't ever want to do that.”

With my short stick and rope I push off the wall. I am barefoot and as I pull the line, I step forward and smash my foot into the cap on the hole that contains the anchor line. The pain in my toes is terrible and I'm hopping as we leave the lock. “Safe journey,” the lockmaster cries as we sail on to the river past Thief Slough.

After the lock and dam the day feels long. I want something to happen, something more exciting than banging my toes. Is this all it's going to be? Just floating along? For days, weeks at a time? We pass an eagle's nest. A hundred white pelicans sit on a sandbar to port side. Jerry says they started showing up around 1997 and never left. Overhead they soar with a wingspan of eight or nine feet.

The day has misted over and there is an otherworldly beauty. I am stunned by the breadth and width of this river, an expansiveness as far as I can see. Here it has carved its way through sheer rock, which juts up on the right side. Weeping willows line the bank. There is a kind of slowness that I wouldn't exactly call monotony. It is as if everything is happening in slow motion.

I'm not a boat person. I like to be in water, but not on it. I love to swim. I like the freedom to float, to come and go as I please. I've been on ferry boats in Greece and Fire Island and I've sailed the Galapagos on a cruise ship, but we stopped every few hours. Already I am feeling the confines of this space. I don't do so well in elevators, crowds, and, I suppose, I could now include boats.

But I have opted to do this and must make do. “Life is one big compromise,” my father's voice tells me. “Go with the flow.” I'm not sure my father ever went with the flow, but what choice do I have? For now I am content, sitting on the bow, the sun and a warm breeze on my face. Since I haven't spent much time on a boat before, I decide to familiarize myself with nautical terms. Perhaps because I am a writer I like to know the language when I go anywhere. I want to know what all the words mean. It gives me a greater sense of calm and control. Where do I tie something on the gunwale? Is the bilge the same as the hold? Do we have a lazaret?

I've brought a glossary with me and I start with A. “Above deck” means “On to the deck” not “over it.” For that I am instructed to see “Aloft.” But there is no entry for “Aloft.” When I read that the command “dead astern” means “directly aft,” I'm at a loss. I become tangled on the problem of knots. I see that knots are what you tie, but they are also the speed at which you travel. This seems a paradox I cannot resolve.

As I ponder it, I am aware of the wind rising, a shift in the air. Still the sky is sunny ahead. The golden light of late afternoon sparkles on the water. But now the wind whips across the bow. Little whitecaps pop from the surface. I shiver and wonder if there might be an approaching storm.

I turn to ask Jerry if we are expecting bad weather and see the blackness behind us. The sky has turned to night. I have had nightmares of skies like this. And now this charcoal blanket is swirling over our heads. I point and Jerry, who is at the helm, turns at the same moment. “Holy shit,” he says.

Tom, on the phone with his sister, shouts, “Hey, my sis says there's a big one coming.”

Jerry looks behind him. “You don't have to tell me.” Tom snaps his phone shut and suddenly all the slow motion turns to fast forward. “Tom, take the wheel!” Jerry shouts. “Mary, come topside. Now!”

This is clearly a direct order, but in the wind I can barely climb the ladder and I'm holding on with a very tight fist. I am, however, no longer bored. Quite the contrary. As I struggle up the ladder, I'm thinking to myself, “I've been on the river four hours and I'm going to die.” As Jerry and I inch our way on top, Tom, who is already topside, scoops up Samantha Jean and tucks her into his jacket. “I'm taking her below.” And I'm not clear if he means the ship or his dog, but I'd place my bets on the dog. In the next gust she could blow away.

The wind and blackness are upon us as we struggle to secure the flybridge. The bimini is flapping like an enormous bird, caught by its feet and fighting to take off, as we rush to get it down. As I am tugging on the bimini, I turn, and in the distance, the blackness begins to swirl and I think this must be a tornado. My heart freezes. But it is just coal dust rising from barges behind us.

I am gazing back at the swirling dust when the surface of the river suddenly rises like a great white ghost in some grade-B horror flick. A rather poorly executed special effect at that. A horizontal wall of water about twenty feet high and 150 feet wide careens toward our boat. I shout at Jerry as he grapples with the vinyl bimini. “What is that?”

He looks up and we see this same movement of water ahead of us, coming across the bow. “Get on your hands and knees!” Jerry shouts. “Crawl off the deck! Get back inside!”

“But don't you need my help?” I yell back.

“I need you to crawl off this deck! Now!”

As Jerry bends, struggling against the wind, I squat, battling the gusts. I don't crawl exactly, but I stoop way down. Clutching my glasses, worried that they will fly away, I fight my way to the ladder. The air whirls and the sky turns blacker than night. At the base of the ladder, I grab hold of the railings. The boat is pitching as we plow into the waves, and the deck is wet and slippery.

I make my way to the cabin and Tom, without taking his eyes off the river, pulls open the door. Samantha Jean is buried under a blanket, hyperventilating, and Tom has his eyes dead set on the horizon. Ahead of us there's a hint of sunshine, but we are engulfed in the driving rain and blackness above. We can barely see what's right in front of us. Tom's eyes begin to dart back and forth across the surface. On the flybridge I can see Jerry's legs as he fights to tie the bimini down.

It is clear that we cannot make it to either bank in this squall. We just have to take the hits as they come. Waves crash across the bow as we are pummeled with rain. I think Jerry's going to be blown into the river as he staggers along the railing, making his way below. Without a word between them Tom steps aside and Jerry takes the wheel. He aims the
River Queen
into the rising swells as we race the storm.