The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) (5 page)

Captain Macready had him taken ashore at Cairo, a collection of drab dwellings at the confluence of the Ohio and the Father of Waters, with provisions for the remains to be shipped back to Pittsburgh on the next boat out. He was packed in sawdust in an icehouse there, and this was all that mortal man could do in his behalf. Miserable creature, how much better if he had stayed to perpetuate that thriving business of which he boasted so proudly!

This, Melissa, brings me to the time of our personal sorrow, the disappearance of Jaimie, and it is a sore trial for my hand to form the words. The hour was nearly midnight when Streeter went to his reward in the wheelhouse of the
Courier
, with Jaimie among the horrified onlookers peering through the glass. The accident had occurred at nine, as he and I were preparing to leave for bed. When finally we got into our bunks, we were, I am sure, distressed and wakeful. I fell into a sleep disturbed by visions of that grotesque shape in the paddle wheel (some of Streeter’s clothes were even torn from his body, such was the violence of the blades) and I awoke early, at the first streaks of sunrise. I sensed rather than noticed that Jaimie was not in his bunk. Springing down, I verified that this was the case, and with agitated heart, flung on some clothes and searched the deck, thinking to surprise him in an early morning stroll. He was nowhere to be seen. Frantically, now, I rushed through the ship—into the saloon, the engine room—room by courtesy only; it was all but exposed to the elements—through the lower deck, and at last to the Captain’s cabin. We combed the ship; he was gone.

By now, what with one shocking mishap piled upon another, Captain Macready was in a condition bordering on collapse. His eyes were bilious and his face the color of paste. Disregarding his schedule, already badly upset, he turned about and we searched both the Illinois and the Missouri banks, as well as several channels formed by islands, for a distance of twenty miles back. It was absolutely
hopeless, as all hands knew; and I shall ever honor Macready and tender increasing homage to the country that gave him birth, for the costly pretense he made for my feelings. Even at the best, a thirteen-year-old plunged without warning into that icy sea of mud (it runs at the rate of six miles an hour) would have little hope of survival at this early season of the year. And with the Mississippi now at flood—miles wide in most places—his chance of making shore would be impossibly reduced.

However, the Captain put in at two landings—one consisting of three ramshackle two-storeys and going by the preposterous name of Thebes, and another called Grand Tower, from a huge projection of rock that rises in mid-river, where we left word (and I money) against the chance of the boy’s being heard from. And then, Melissa, in my resolve to leave no stone unturned, I debarked at this hamlet of Cape Girardeau. For six days I have ranged both riverbanks by horseback. I have ferried back and forth four times. I believe I can say with veracity that no resident within some hundreds of yards of this ugly brown torrent has gone without notice of my quest. If Jaimie is alive, he will be found; that is my solemn promise. But it would be selfish and unfeeling to arouse false hopes. The boy is dead, and I alone am guilty. Conscience-torn, reduced by fatigue, I yet see nothing to be gained by turning back from my journey. And so, my dear wife, having made this calamitous start, I now resume my way toward California, with a grieving heart, and with the hope that, in God, you will find some means of forgiving,

Your devoted husband
,
S
ARDIUS
M
C
P
HEETERS
(M.D.)

Reading that letter over, now at this later date, I feel a lump come to my throat. It isn’t a bad thing to be wanted, and I only wish I could have showed up for the funeral services that my mother held afterward. The Reverend Carmody, they say, was at his very oily best, and he went praising and glorifying along perfectly straight-faced and sincere, as if I’d located the Holy Grail. Judging from the remarks he’d made about Herbert Swann and me
in Sunday school, which were mostly on the opposite tack, the funeral must have placed him under a pretty brisk strain.

Another possibility was that he got me mixed up with somebody else. There were two church funerals that week, one for me, who was absent, and another where they had a resident corpse, with all the trimmings, a new boy in town that had a good record and was what they called a Model of Deportment, but he was knocked down by a beer wagon while he was holding an umbrella for two old ladies crossing the street, so he wasn’t much better off than if he’d been the town nuisance, as far as I can see.

Aside from that, the sermon for me was purely wind wasted. At the moment when Carmody was mooing about Jehovah’s Blessed Cherubs and Infants Now at Peace, I was thrashing through the Missouri backwoods as loaded up with troubles as old Job, the sheep farmer they kept picking on in the Bible, which was one of his favorite characters. The way I fell off that boat was this: I was lying there in the bunk, downcast and moody, and philosophizing over Mr. Streeter’s bad fortune, and wondering what had become of his gold. Nobody had mentioned it at the rescue, and I happened to remember that he had that bag on him when he left. So I said to myself, there’s the remainders of a couple of garments stuck in the back corners of those fanways—I saw them when they took him out—and what if the gold’s in
them?
Furthermore, in the morning they’ll notice those clothes, so why wouldn’t it be a good idea to haul them out now and save everybody the trouble? In addition to which, if the money
is
there, somebody will only collar it Or when they settle the estate the lawyers will gobble it up, because many’s the time I’ve heard my father say that a lawyer is nothing but a burglar with a license to steal.

Right away, it made me feel good to know that I might prevent a burglary, so I slid down quietly from the bunk, and pulled on my shirt and mohair trousers, because it was cool out there now, and tiptoed around to the stern. The moon was up, and the boat was full of sharp shadows that made me jump, they favored humans so. In the soft light, the river looked big and still and silvery, not
muddy and dipping with high-water whirlpools, the way it was in the daytime. Off on the Missouri side I could see a smudge of bluff bank, but on the Illinois side, where there was nothing but low bottom land, all under water, I couldn’t make anything out at all.

Hanging on carefully, but excited too, I slipped back along the narrow board runway beside the big wheel and felt down in the corner. Sure enough, soggy and torn, a piece of Mr. Streeter’s jacket was wedged there. I pulled it out an inch at a time, to keep it from falling in the river. It was the left-hand half, as you’d face him, and had two pockets, one outside and one in, and in this inside pocket I found his leather pouch. After the poker games, it didn’t feel so very heavy, but it gave a nice jingle when I shook it, so I stuffed it into my shirt and turned to go.

And right there is where I had my bad luck. The river was on such a rampage, and had torn so many things loose along its banks, that trees and logs and boxes and barrels and dead pigs and even houses were spinning downstream almost anywhere you looked. One night the captain had tied up to a cottonwood at the foot of a bar; other times in the dark he stayed out of the channel, seeking the cleaner water, removed from the trash line.

But now there was a grinding bump and shudder, while I had both hands loose stowing the gold, and I toppled off that runway like a tenpin. I lit on my back, outboard of the wheel, thanks to goodness, but popped back up in its wake, too choked up with muddy water to make a sound. The river was deathly cold and looked as black as night; even so, I saw a darker shape, and it was this same tree that had caused all the trouble, riding low in the water, with leafy branches sticking up, only now it was about to do me a service. For I couldn’t have swum fifty yards in that ice water without support. Already my feet and legs were numb clear through, and my clothes weighed me down like sand.

The spot where I fell in was just north of Tower Rock, I’ve found out since. This was the worst place on the river between St. Louis and Memphis, a big upthrust block of stone dividing the
river, surrounded everywhere by whirlpools that sloped down as much as six feet, big enough to upset a skiff, and a current almost like rapids in a hilly stream.

Well, the first thing I knew, the tree I was hugging—I was too weak to haul myself up—bobbed and ducked, twirling half around, then scraped its way over some rock and we were ashore, so to speak. Panting and shivering, I crawled past a pebbly shelf and into some prickly grass. It was bitter-cold; I’ve never felt such a cold, before or after, even in the western mountains.

Said I to myself, I’ll freeze to death if something isn’t done, so I got up and began stamping and squeezing out the water and hallooing for help, not knowing it was an island. But it was; I made sure of that soon after, stumbling my way up a little path to the top, where some scraggly pines grew, from where I could look all around, seeing nothing but water in the moonlight. Some clouds sifted in front of the moon, now, the way they usually mass up before dawn in that valley, and I wasn’t any longer sure which was the Illinois shore and which the Missouri.

But I went down the path again, because I knew what I had to do; no matter how painful. I’d freeze, or starve, or both, if I stayed on the rock; neither was there much chance of boatmen snooping around before the river dropped—it was too roiled up—so I had to get off while I could.

My tree was still there, held against the rock by the current, and I pulled it up a little farther. Then I hunted around and pretty soon found a piece of drift for a paddle. Wading the tree down one side in the shallows, I jumped up on the trunk near a low branch, and perched myself astride, all but my feet high and dry. It was a tolerable craft, somewhat inclined to wallow and roll, particularly when the bottom branches scraped, which they did before we floated clear, but it was the only boat in sight, for all that.

Very cautiously, I dipped my paddle now and then, waiting for the rolls to level off, and eased us ever so gently toward Missouri, which was the nearest bank, being to the right. We were booming
downstream in black, empty space, with never a light showing anywhere, nor a sound to break the stillness. It was awesome, and grand, too, but somehow I didn’t care for it as a vacation. Working my paddle, nearly shaking my bones loose, I thought of my warm bed in Louisville.

Presently the sky clouded up and I couldn’t see any farther than I could spit, but before long I heard a twittering of birds off to the right, so I reckoned that daylight was coming. I was close in to shore; still, no matter how I paddled, I couldn’t seem to land.

I thought, the river bends here and the channel sets in toward the bank, but there’s a strip of backwater eddy, and I can’t push the tree out of the current, not without a sweep. So I knew I’d have to swim for it. I waited till the blackness was graying a little and I could see the trees going by like scenery in a play; then I splashed off my perch, still holding the board, and struck out kicking. It couldn’t have been more than a minute or two, though it felt like an hour, before I was out of the channel and into the easy water, and after that I made good time for the bank, which was bushy and steep along here.

Drifting down, I caught a root, pulled it out with a spray of dirt in my face, grabbed another that was grown all over with thorns, and finally nailed a willow that held fast, with me on it, too played out to move. I lay there getting my strength back, blue to the chin with cold. Then I dragged myself up the bank through gravelly mud and brambles, and you may believe that my clothes were a sorry sight when I finished.

Nothing on top but dense woods and rocks, no road, or even a footpath anywhere. The only thing for it, I judged, was to strike out inland; there was bound to be a farmer somewhere, if I had to walk to Timbuctoo. But I was so stiff with cold and exhaustion I
fell down every few feet, and the last time I didn’t count on getting back up. When things can’t go much worse, they generally take a turn for the better, and now I had a windfall of good luck for a change.

Up forward in the woods, still dark in here and dripping with damp, I caught sight of a glow, a flickering of reddish light, very near to the ground. If this was what I thought, I could praise the saints and take a new lease on life. True enough, lightning had knocked over a dead sycamore, and the trunk underneath, eaten out in a charred hollow, was still smoldering, as it probably had been for days. I was down on my knees in a second, feeding it whatever dry leaves and sticks I could find. In no time at all, I had a blaze going that would have warmed up a mummy, and with my clothes, what rags were left, spread out on the tree to dry.

Well, this was all right. I turned around slowly, naked as a jaybird, roasting one side after another, letting the heat sink clear into my bones. When you come right down to it, there’s nothing like a fire for putting the spunk back into a body. Looked at in some ways, my situation didn’t exactly call for a celebration—I was standing pelt-bare in a strange woods out in the middle of nowhere—but I felt fine and ready to push right ahead.

When the clothes were dried stiff, I put them on—though they were powerful scratchy and raw—and kept going inland, watching the trees for moss, trying to head due west. Maybe an hour had gone by—I was getting hungry, and a little cold again—when I waded out of a backwater slough, climbed a high ridge thick with walnuts and oaks, and came down into a clearing. In the center, on a grassy knoll by a stream, was a miserable-looking farmhouse: warped gray clapboards, both doorsteps gone—burned for firewood, likely—roof very patchy and rough, with the shingles all curled up, no more foundation than rocks piled up under each corner, pigpen close enough so that everybody could enjoy the smell, and a chicken house just behind that, with a saggy lean-to adjoining. No paint on anything, nor decorated up any, rusty old kettles and tools lying out in the yard, a well with a wheel up above, some faded garments
—denim jeans, a pettiskirt or two, an old yellow sunbonnet—blowing on a line, a double rank of firewood spread over with scraps of dirty canvas, and early morning smoke winding out of a hewn-stone chimney, the lonesomest sight of all, somehow.