71CHAPTER XIII
“And he says he’s a sinner himself,” Nelia repeated, when she returned on board her cabin-boat in the sheltering safety of Wolf Island chute, with Mamie Caope, Parson Rasba, and the other shanty-boaters within a stone’s toss of her.
Till she was among them, among friends she trusted, she had not noticed the incessant strain which she endured down those long, grim river miles. Now she could give way, in the privacy of her boat, to feminine tears and bitterness. Courage she had in plenty, but she had more sensitiveness than courage. She was not yet tuned to the river harmonies.
Something in Rasba’s words, or it was in his voice, or in the quick, full-flood of his glance, touched her senses.
“You see, missy, I’m a sinner myse’f!”
What had he meant? If he had meant that she, too, was a sinner, was that any of his business? Of course, being a parson—she shrugged her shoulders. Her thoughts ran swiftly back to her home that used-to-be. She laughed as she recalled the deprecatory little man who had preached in the church she had occasionally attended. She compared the trim, bird-like perspicuity and wing-flap gestures of Rev. Mr. Beeve with the slow, huge turn and stand-fast of Parson Rasba.
She was glad to escape the Mississippi down this little chute; she was glad to have a phrase to puzzle over instead of the ever-present problem of her own future and her own fate; she was glad that she had drifted in on Mrs. Mame Caope and Jim and Mr. Falteau and Mrs. Dobstan and Parson Rasba, instead of falling among those other kinds of people.72
Mrs. Caope was an old acquaintance of her mother who had lived all her life on the rivers. She was a better boatman than most, and could pilot a stern-wheel whiskey boat or set hoop nets for fish.
“If I get a man, and he’s mean,” Mrs. Caope had said often, “I shift him. I ’low a lady needs protection up the bank er down the riveh, but I ’low if my cookin’ don’t pay my board, an’ if fish I take out’n my nets ain’t my own, and the boat I live in ain’t mine—well, I’ve drapped two men off’n the stern of my boat to prove hit!”
Mrs. Caope had not changed at all, not in the years Nelia could recall, except to change her name. It was the custom, to ask, perfectly respectfully, what name she might be having now, and Mrs. Mame never took offence, being good natured, and understanding how hard it was to keep track of her matrimonial adventures, episodes of sentiment but without any nonsense.
“Sho!” Mrs. Caope had said once, “I disremember if I couldn’t stand him er he couldn’t stand me!”
Nelia, adrift in her own life, and sure now that she never had really cared very much for Gus Carline, admitted to herself that her husband had been only a step up out of the poverty and misery of her parents’ shack.
“You see, missy, I’m a sinner myse’f!”
Her ears had caught the depths of the pathos of his regret and sorrow, and she pitied him. At the same time her own thoughts were ominous, and her face, regular, bright, vivacious, showed a hardness which was alien to it.
Nelia went over to Mrs. Caope’s for supper, and Parson Rasba was there, having brought in a wild goose which he had shot on Wolf Island while going about his meditations that afternoon. Mrs. Caope had the goose sizzling in the big oven of her coal range—coal from73Pittsburgh barges wrecked along the river on bars—and the big supper was sweeter smelling than Rasba ever remembered having waited for.
Mrs. Caope told him to “ask one of them blessin’s if yo’ want, Parson!” and the four bowed their heads.
Jim Caope then fell upon the bird, neck, wings, and legs, and while he carved Mrs. Caope scooped out the dressing, piled up the fluffy biscuits, and handed around the soup tureen full of gravy. Then she chased the sauce with glass jars full of quivering jellies, reaching with one hand to take hot biscuits from the oven while she caught up the six-quart coffee pot with the other.
“I ain’t got no patience with them women that don’t feed their men!” she declared. “About all men want’s a full stomach, anyhow, an’ if you could only git one that wa’n’t lazy, an’ didn’t drink, an’ wasn’t impedent, an’ knowed anything, besides, you’d have something. Ain’t that so, Nelia?”
“Oh, indeed yes,” Nelia cried, from the fullness of her experience, which was far less than that of the hostess.
After they had eaten, they went from the kitchen into the sitting room, where Rasba turned to Nelia.
“You came down the river alone?” he asked.
“Yes,” she admitted.
“I wonder you wouldn’t be scairt up of it—nights, and those lonesome bends?”
“It’s better than some other things.” Nelia shook her head. “Besides, you’ve come alone down the Ohio yourself.”
He looked at her, and Mrs. Caope chuckled.
“But—but you’re a woman!” Rasba exclaimed.
“Suppose a mean man came aboard your boat, and—and tried to rob you,” Nelia asked, level voiced, “what would you do?”74
“Why, course, I’d—I’d likely stop him.”
“You’d throw him overboard?”
“Well—if hit were clost to the bank an’ he could swim, I mout.”
Nelia and the Caopes laughed aloud, and Rasba joined in the merriment. When the laughter had subsided, Rasba said:
“The reason I was asking, as I came by the River Forks I found a little red boat there with a man on the cabin floor shot through––”
“Dead?” Nelia gasped.
“No, just kind of pricked up a bit, into one shoulder. He said a lady shot him because he ’lowed to land into the same eddy with her.”
“But—where––?” Nelia half-whispered. “Where did he go?”
“Hit were Jest Prebol,” Mrs. Caope said. “You was tellin’ of him, Parson.”
“Hit were Prebol,” Rasba nodded, “an’ he shore needed shooting!”
“Yas, suh. That kind has to be shot some to make ’em behave theirselves,” Mrs Caope exclaimed, sharply. “If it wa’n’t fer ladies shootin’ men onct in awhile, down Old Mississip’, why, ladies couldn’t git to live here a-tall!”
“And women, sometimes, don’t do men any good,” Rasba mused, aloud, “I’ve wondered right smart about hit. You see, a parson circuit rides around, an’ he sees a sight more’n he tells. Lawse, he shore do!”
The two women glared at him, but he was studying his huge hands, first the backs and then the calloused palms. He was really wondering, so the two women glanced at each other, laughing. The idea that probably some men needed protection from women could not help but amuse while it exasperated them.75
“Prebol said,” Rasba continued, “hit were a pretty woman, young an’ alone. ‘How’d I know?’ he asked. ‘How’d I know she were a spit-fire an’ mean, theh all alone into a lonesome bend? How’d I know?’”
“I ’low he shore found out,” Mrs. Caope spoke up, tartly, and Nelia looked at her gratefully. “Hit takes a bullet to learn fellers like Jest Prebol—an’ him thinkin’ he’s so smart an’ such a lady killer. I bet he knows theh’s some ladies that’s men killers, too, now. Next time he meets a lady he’ll wait to be invited ’fore he lands into the same eddy with her, even if hit’s a three-mile eddy.”
“Theh’s Mrs. Minah,” Jim Caope suggested.
“Mrs. Minah!” Mrs. Caope exclaimed. “Talk about riveh ladies—theh’s one. She owns Mozart Bend. Seventeen mile of Mississippi River’s her’n, an’ nobody but knows hit, if not to start with, then by the end. She stands theh, at the breech of her rifle, and, ho law, cayn’t she shoot! She’s real respectable, too, cyarful an’ ’cordin’ to law. She’s had seven husbands, four’s daid an’ two’s divorced, an’ one she’s got yet, ’cordin’ to the last I hearn say about it. I tell you, if a lady’s got any self-respect, she’ll git a divorce, an’ she’ll git married ag’in. That’s what I say, with divorces reasonable, like they be, an’ costin’ on’y $17.50 to Mendova, or Memphis, er mos’ anywheres.”
“How long—how long does it take?” Nelia asked, eagerly.
“Why, hardly no time at all. You jes’ go theh, an’ the lawyer he takes all he wants to know, an’ he says come ag’in, an’ next day, er the next trip, why, theh’s yo’ papers, an’ all for $17.50. Seems like they’s got special reg’lations for us shanty-boaters.”
“I’m glad to know about that,” Nelia said. “I thought—I never knew much about—about divorces.76I thought there was a lot of—of rigmarole and testimony and court business.”
“Nope! I tell yo’, some of them Mendova lawyers is slick an’ ’commodatin’. Why, one time I was in an awful hurry, landin’ in ’long of the upper ferry, an’ I went up town, an’ seen the lawyer, an’ told him right how I was fixed. Les’ see, that wa—um-m––Oh, I ’member now, Jasper Hill. I’d married him up the line, I disremember—anyhow, ’fore I’d drapped down to Cairo, I knowed he’d neveh do, nohow, so I left him up the bank between Columbus an’ Hickman—law me, how he squawked! Down by Tiptonville, where I’d landed, they was a real nice feller, Mr. Dickman. Well, we kind of co’ted along down, one place an anotheh, an’ he wanted to git married. I told how hit was, that I wasn’t ’vorced, an’ so on, but if he meant business, we’d drap into Mendova, which we done. He wanted to pay for the divorce, but I’m independent thataway. I think a lady ought to pay for her own ’vorces, so I done hit, an’ I was divorced at 3 o’clock, married right next door into the Justice’s, an’ we drapped out an’ down the riveh onto our honeymoon. Mr. Dickman was a real gentleman, but, somehow, he couldn’t stand the riveh. It sort of give him the malary, an’ he got to thinking about salmon fishin’ so he went to the Columbia. We parted real good friends, but the Mississippi’s good ’nough for me, yes, indeed. I kind of feel zif I knowed hit, an’ hit’s real homelike.”
“It is lovely down here,” Nelia remarked. “Everything is so kind of—kind of free and easy. But wasn’t it dreadful—I mean the first time—the first divorce, Mamie?”
“Course, yes, course,” Mrs. Caope admitted, slowly, with a frown, “I neveh will forget mine. I’d shifted my man, an’ I was right down to cornmeal an’ bacon.77Then a real nice feller come along, Mr. Darlet. I had to take my choice between a divorce an’ a new weddin’ dress, an’ I tell you hit were real solemocholy fer me decidin’ between an’ betwixt. You know how young gals are, settin’ a lot by dresses an’ how they look, an’ so on. Young gals ain’ got much but looks, anyhow. Time a lady gits experience, she don’t set so much store by looks, an’ she don’t have to, nohow. Well, theh I was, with a nice man, an’ if I didn’t divorce that first scoundrel where’d I be? So I let the dress go, an’ mebby you’ll b’lieve hit, an’ mebby yo’ won’t, but I had $18.97, an’ I paid my $17.50 real reg’lar, an’ I had jest what was left, $1.47, an’ me ready to bust out crying, feelin’ so mean about marryin’ into an old walking skirt.
“I was all alone, an’ I had a good notion to run down the back way, an’ trip off down the riveh without no man, I felt so ’shamed. An’ theh, right on the sidewalk, was a wad of bills, $99 to a penny. My lan’! I wropped my hand around hit, an’ yo’ should of seen Mr. Darlet when he seen me come walking down, new hat, new dress, new shoes, new silk stockings—the whole business new. I wa’n’t such a bad-lookin’ gal, afteh all. That taught me a lesson. I’ve always be’n real savin’ sinct then, an’ I ain’t be’n ketched sinct with the choice to make of a ’vorce er a weddin’ dress. No, indeed, not me!”
Parson Rasba looked at her, and Nelia, her eyes twinkling, looked at the Parson. Nelia could understand the feelings in all their minds. She had her own viewpoint, too, which was exceedingly different from those of the others. The strain of weeks of questioning, weeks of mental suffering, was relieved by the river woman’s serious statement and Parson Rasba’s look of bewilderment at the kaleidoscopic matrimonial78adventuring. At the same time, his wonder and Mrs. Caope’s unconscious statement stirred up in her thoughts a new questioning.
When Nelia returned on board her boat, and sat in its cabin, a freed woman, she very calmly reckoned up the advantages of Mrs. Caope’s standards. Then seeing that it was after midnight, and that only the stars shone in that narrow, wooded chute, she felt she wanted to go out into the wide river again, to go where she was not shut in. She cast off her lines and noiselessly floated out and down the slow current.
She saw Parson Rasba’s boat move out into the current behind her and drift along in the soft, autumn night. Her first thought was one of indignation, but when a little later they emerged into the broad river current and she felt the solitude of the interminable surface, her mood changed.
What the big, quizzical mountain parson had in mind she did not know. It was possible that he was a very bad man, indeed. She could not help but laugh under her breath at his bewilderment regarding Mrs. Caope, which she felt was a genuine expression of his real feelings. At the same time, whatever his motive in following her, whether it was to protect her—which she could almost believe—or to court her, which was not at all unlikely, or whether he had a baser design, she did not know, but she felt neither worry nor fear.
“I don’t care,” she shook her head, defiantly, “I like him!”
79CHAPTER XIV
Carline recovered his equilibrium after a time. His nerves, long on the ragged edge, had given way, and he was ashamed of his display of emotion.
“Seems as though some things are about all a man can stand,” he said to Terabon, the newspaper man. “You know how it is!”
“Oh, yes! I’ve had my troubles, too,” Terabon admitted.
“It isn’t fair!” Carline exclaimed. “Why can’t a man enjoy himself and have a good time, and not—and not––”
“Have a headache the next day?” Terabon finished the sentence with a grave face.
“That’s it. I’m not what you’d call a hard drinker; I like to take a cocktail, or a whiskey, the same as any man. I like to go out around and see folks, talk to ’em, dance—you know, have a good time!”
“Everybody does,” Terabon admitted.
“And my wife, she wouldn’t go around and she was—she was––”
“Jealous because you wanted to use your talents to entertain?”
“That’s it, that’s it. You understand! I’m a good fellow; I like to joke around and have a good time. Take a man that don’t go around, and he’s a dead one. It ain’t as though she couldn’t be a good sport—Lord! Why, I’d just found out she was the best sport that ever lived. I thought everything was all right. Next day she was gone—tricky as the devil! Why, she got me to sign up a lot of papers, got all my spare cash, stocks, bonds—everything handy. Oh, she’s slick! Bright,80too—bright’s anybody. Why, she could talk about books, or flowers, or birds—about anything. I never took much interest in them.”
“And brought up in that shack on Distiller’s Island?”
“Stillhouse Island, yes, sir. What do you know about that?”
“A remarkable woman!”
“Yes, sir—I—I’ve got some photographs,” and Carline turned to a writing desk built into the motorboat. He brought out fifteen or twenty photographs. Terabon looked at them eagerly. He could not associate the girl of the pictures with the island shack, with this weakling man, nor yet with the Mississippi River—at least not at that moment.
“She’s beautiful,” he exclaimed, sincerely.
“Yes, sir.” Carline packed the pictures away.
He started the motor, straightened the boat out and steered into mid-stream, looking uncertainly from side to side.
“There’s no telling,” he said, “not about anything.”
“On the river no one can tell much about anything!” Terabon assented.
“You’re just coming down, I suppose, looking for hist’ries to write?”
“That’s about it. I just sit in the skiff, there, and I write what I see, on the machine: A big sandbar, a flock of geese, a big oak tree just on the brink of the bank half the roots exposed and going to fall in a minute or a day—everything like that!”
“I bet some of these shanty-boaters could tell you histories,” Carline said. “I tell you, some of them are bad. Why, they’d murder a man for ten dollars—those river pirates would.”
“No doubt about it!”81
“But they wouldn’t talk, ’course. It must be awful hard to make up them stories in the magazines.”
“Oh, if a man gets an idea, he can work it up into a story. It takes work, of course, and time.”
“I don’t see how anybody can do it.” Carline shook his head. “There’s a man up to Gage. He wants to write a book, but he ain’t never been able to find anything to write about. You see, Gage ain’t much but a little landing, you might say.”
“Chester, and the big penitentiary is just below there, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes!”
“I’d think there might be at least one story for him to write there.”
“Oh, he don’t want to write about crooks; he wants to write about nice people, society people, and that kind, and big cities. He says it’s awful hard to find anybody to write about.”
“You’ve got to look to find heroes,” Terabon admitted. “I came more than a thousand miles to see a shanty-boat.”
“You di-i-d? Just to see a shanty-boat!” Carline stared at Terabon in amazement.
In spite of Terabon being such a queer duck he made a good companion. He was a good cook, for one thing, and when they landed in below Hickman Bend, he went ashore and killed three squirrels and two black ducks in the woods and marsh beyond the new levee.
When he returned, he found a skiff landed near by on the sandbar. Carline was talking to the man, who had just handed over a gallon jug. The man pulled away swiftly and disappeared down the chute. Carline explained:
“He’s a whiskey pedlar; a man always needs to have whiskey on board; malaria is bad down here, and82a fellow might catch cold. You see how it is if a man don’t have some whiskey on board.”
“I understand,” Terabon admitted.
After supper Carline decided that there was a lot of night air around, and that a man couldn’t take too many precautions against that deadly river miasma whose insidious menace so many people have ignored to their great cost. As for himself, Carline didn’t propose to be taken bad when he had so universal a specific, to take or leave alone, just as he wanted.
Terabon, having put up the hoops of his skiff and stretched the canvas over them, retired to his own boat and spent two hours writing.
In the morning, when he stirred out, he found Carline lying in the engine pit, oblivious to the night air that had fallen upon him, protected as he was by his absorption of the sure preventive of night air getting him first. The jug was on the floor, and Terabon, after a little thought, poured out about two and a half quarts which he replaced with distilled water from the motorboat’s drinking bottle. Then he dropped down the chute into the main river to resume his search for really interesting “histories.”
The river had never been more glorious than that morning. The sun shone from a white, misty sky. It was warm, with the slight tang of autumn, and the yellow leaves were fluttering down; squirrels were barking, and a flock of geese, so high in the air that they sparkled, in the sunshine, were gossiping, and the music of their voices rained upon the river surface as upon a sounding board.
Terabon was approaching Donaldson’s Point, Winchester Chute, Island No. 10, and New Madrid. An asterisk on his map showed that Slough Neck was interesting, and sure enough, he found a 60-foot boat just83above Upper Slough Landing, anchored off the sandbar. This was a notorious whiskey boat, and just below it was a flight of steps up the steep bank. No plantation darky ever used those steps. He would rather scramble in the loose silt and risk his neck than climb that easy stairway—yes, indeed!
Terabon, drifting by, close at hand, gazed at the scene. From that craft Negroes had gone forth to commit crime; white men had gone out to do murder, and one of them had rolled down those steps, shot dead. On the other side of Slough Neck, just outside of Tiptonville, there was a tree on which seven men had been lynched.
He pulled across to the foot of Island No. 10 sandbar, to walk up over that historic ground, and to visit the remnants of Winchester Chute where General Grant had moored barges carrying huge mortars with which to drop shells into the Confederate works on Island No. 10.
He hailed a shanty-boat just below where he landed, and as the window opened and he saw someone within, he asked:
“Will you kindly watch my skiff? I’m going up over the island.”
“Yes, glad to!”
“Thank you.” He bowed, and went upon his exploration.
It was hard to believe that this sandbar, grown to switch willows which increased to poles six or seven inches in diameter, had once been a big island covered with stalwart trees, with earthworks, cannon, and desperate soldiers. Its serene quiet, undulating sands and casual weed-trees, showing the stain of floods that had filled the bark with sediment, proved the indifference of the river to fleeting human affairs—the trifling84work of human hands had been washed away in a spring tide or two, and Island No. 10 was half way to the Gulf by this time.
Terabon returned to his skiff three or four hours later, and taking up his typewriter, began to write down what he had seen, elaborating the pencil notes which he had made. As he wrote he became conscious of an observer, and of the approach of someone who was diffident and curious—a familiar enough sensation of late.
He looked up, started, and reached for his hat. It was a woman, a young woman, with bright eyes, grace, dignity—and much curiosity.
“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” she apologized. “I was just wondering what on earth you could be doing!”
“Oh, I’m writing—making notes––”
“Yes. But—here!”
“I’m a newspaper writer,” he made his familiar statement. “My name is Lester Terabon. I’m from New York. I came down here from St. Louis to see the Mississippi.”
“You write for newspapers?” she repeated.
She came and sat down on the bow deck of his skiff, frankly curious and interested.
“My name’s Nelia Crele,” she smiled. “I’m a shanty-boater. That’s my boat.”
“I’m sure I’m glad to meet you,” he bowed, “Mrs. Crele.”
“You find lots to write about?”
“I can’t write fast enough,” he replied, enthusiastically, “I’ve been coming six weeks—from St. Louis. I’ve made more than 60,000 words in notes already, and the more I make the more I despair of getting it all down. Why, right here—New Madrid, Island 10, and—and––”
“And me?” she asked. “Did you stop at Gage?”85
“At Stillhouse Island,” he admitted, circumspectly. “Mr. Crele there said I should be sure and tell his daughter, if I happened to meet her, that her mother wanted her to be sure and write and let her know how she is getting along.”
“Oh, I’ll do that,” she assured him. “I was just writing home when you landed in. Isn’t it strange how everybody knows everybody down here, and how you keep meeting people you know—that you’ve heard about? You knew me when you saw me!”
“Yes—I’d seen your pictures.”
“Mammy hadn’t but one picture of me!” She stared at him.
“That’s so,” he thought, unused to such quick thought.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked him, looking around her. “Do you try to write all that, too—I mean this sandbar, and those willows, and that woods down there, and—the caving bank?”
“Everything,” he admitted. “See?”
He handed her the page which he had just written. Holding it in one hand—there was hardly a breath of air stirring—she read it word for word.
“Yes, that’s it!” She nodded her head. “How do you do it? I’ve just been reading—let me see, ‘... the best romance becomes dangerous if by its excitement it renders the ordinary course of life uninteresting, and—and––’ I’ve forgotten the rest of it. Could anything make this life down here—anything written, I mean—seem uninteresting?”
He looked at her without answering. What was this she was saying? What was this shanty-boat woman, this runaway wife, talking about? He was dazed at being transported so suddenly from his observations to such reflections.86
“That’s right,” he replied, inanely. “I remember reading that—somewhere!”
“You’ve read Ruskin?” she cried. “Really, have you?”
“Sesame and Lilies—there’s where it was!”
“Oh, you know?” she exclaimed, looking at him. He caught the full flash of her delight, as well as surprise, at finding someone who had read what she quoted, and could place the phrase.
“The sun’s bright,” she continued. “Won’t you come down on my boat in the shade? I’ve lots of books, and I’m hungry—I’m starving to talk to somebody about them!”
It was a pretty little boat, sweet and clean; the sitting room was draped with curtains along the walls, and there was a bookcase against the partition. She drew a rocking chair up for him, drew her own little sewing chair up before the shelves, and began to take out books.
He had but to sit there and show his sympathy with her excitement over those books. He could not help but remember where he had first heard her name, seen the depressed woman who was her mother. And the bent old hunter who was her father. It was useless for him to try to explain her.
Just that morning, too, he had left Nelia Crele’s husband in an alcoholic stupor—a man almost incredibly stupid!
“I know you don’t mind listening to me prattle!” she laughed, archly. “You’re used to it. You’re amused, too, and you’re thinking what a story I will make, aren’t you, now?”
“If—if a man could only write you!” he said, with such sincerity that she laughed aloud with glee.
“Oh, I’ve read books!” she declared. “I know—I’ve87been miserable, and I’ve been unhappy, but I’ve turned to the books, and they’ve told me. They kept me alive—they kept me above those horrid little things which a woman—which I have. You’ve never been in jail, I suppose?”
“What—in jail? I’ve been there, but not a prisoner. To see prisoners.”
“You couldn’t know, then, the way prisoners feel. I know. I reckon most women know. But now I’m out of jail. I’m free.”
He could not answer; her eyes flashed as they narrowed, and she fairly glared at him in the intensity of her declaration.
“Oh, you couldn’t know,” she laughed, “but that’s the way I feel. I’m free! Isn’t the river beautiful to-day? I’m like the river––”
“Which is kept between two banks?” he suggested.
“I was wrong,” she shook her head. “I’m a bird––”
“I can well admit that,” he laughed.
“Oh,” she cried, in mock rebuke, “the idea!”
“It’s your own—and a very brilliant one,” he retorted, and they laughed together.
There was no resisting the gale of Nelia Crete’s effervescent spirits. It was clear that she had burst through bonds of restraint that had imprisoned her soul for years. Terabon was too acute an observer to frighten the sensitive exhilaration. It would pass—he was only too sure of that. What would follow?
The sandbar was miles long, miles wide; six or seven miles of caving bend was visible below them, part of it over another sandbar that extended out into the river. There was not a boat, house, human being, or even fence in sight in any direction. Across the river there was a cotton field, but so far away it was that the stalks were but a purple haze under the afternoon sun.88
“You think I’m queer?” she suddenly demanded.
“No, but I would be if––”
“If what?”
“If I didn’t think you were the dandiest river tripper in the world,” he exclaimed.
“You’re a dear boy,” she laughed. “You don’t know how much good you’ve done me already. Now we’ll get supper.”
“I’ve two black ducks,” he said. “I’ll bet they’ll make a good––”
“Roast,” she took his word. “I’ll show you I’m a dandy cook, too!”
89CHAPTER XV
The Mississippi River brings people from the most distant places to close proximity; Pittsburg and even Salamanca meet Fort Benton and St. Paul at the Forks of the Ohio. On the other hand, with uncanny certainty, those most eager to meet are kept apart and thrown to the ends of the world.
Parson Rasba saw Nelia Crele’s boat drift out into the current and drop down the Chute of Wolf Island, and impelled by solitude and imagination he followed her. She had awakened sensations in his heart which he had never before known, so he acted with primitive directness and moved out into the Mississippi.
The river carried him swiftly toward a town whose electric lights sparkled on a high bluff, Hickman, and he saw the cabin-boat of the young and venturesome woman clearly outlined between him and the town. For nearly an hour he was conscious of the assistance of the river in carrying him along at an even pace, permitting him to remain as guardian of the woman. He felt that she needed him, that he must help her, and there grew in his heart an emotion which strangely made him desire to sing and to shout.
He watched the cabin-boat drift down right into the pathway of reflections that fell from the lights on Hickman bluffs. His eyes were apparently fixed upon the boat, and he could not lose sight of it. The river carried him right into the same glare, and for a few minutes he looked up at the arcs, and shaded his eyes to get some view of the town whose sounds consisted of the mournful howling of a dog.
Rasba looked back at the town, and felt the awe90which a sleeping village inspires in the thoughts of a passer-by. He thought perhaps he would never again see that town. He wondered if there was a lost soul there whose slumberings he could disturb and bring it to salvation. He looked down the river, and the next instant his boat was seized as by a strong hand and whirled around and around, and flung far from its course. He remembered the phenomenon at the Forks of the Ohio, and again at Columbus bluff’s. With difficulty he found his bearings.
He looked around and saw to his surprise that he was drifting up stream. He looked about him in amazement. He searched the blackness of the river, and stared at the blinding lights of the town. He began to row with his sweeps, and look down stream whither had disappeared the cabin-boat whose occupant he had felt called upon to guard and protect.
That boat was gone. In the few minutes it had disappeared from his view. He surmised, at last, that he had been thrust into an eddy, for the current was carrying him up stream, and he rowed against it in vain. Only when he had floated hundreds of yards in the leisurely reverse current below the great bar of Island No. 6 and had drifted out into the main current again, almost under the Hickman lights once more, was he able in his ignorance to escape from the time-trap into which he had fallen.
Standing at his oars, and rowing down stream, he tried to overtake the young woman whose good looks, bright eyes, sympathetic understanding, and need of his spiritual tutoring had caught his mind and made it captive.
Dawn, following false dawn, saw him passing New Madrid, still rowing impatiently, his eyes staring down the wild current, past a graveyard poised ready to91plunge on the left bank, and then down the baffling crossing at Point Pleasant and through the sunny breadths up to Tiptonville, half sunk in the river, only to fall away toward Little Cypress—and still no sight of the lost cabin-boat.
In mid-afternoon, weary and worn by sleeplessness and expectancy, he pulled his boat into the deadwater at the foot of an eddy and having thrown over his stone anchor, sadly entered his cabin and, without prayer, subsided into sleep.
If he dreamed he was not awakened to consciousness by his visions. He slept on in the deep weariness which followed the wakefulness that had continued through a night of undiminished anxiety into a day of doubt and increasing despair. It had not occurred to him, in his simplicity, that the young woman would escape from him. The shadow and the gloom next to the bank on either side had not suggested his passing by the object of his intention. His thought was that she must have gone right on down stream, though he might have divined from his own condition that she, too, long since must have been weary.
He awakened some time in the morning, after twelve hours or so of uninterrupted slumber. He turned out into the fascinating darkness of early morning on the Mississippi. A gust of chill wind swept down out of the sky, rippling the surface and roaring through the woods up the bank. The gust was followed by a raw calm and further blanketing of the few stars that penetrated the veil of mist.
He had in mind the further pursuit of Nelia, and hauling in his anchor he pulled out into mid-current and then by lamp-light prepared his breakfast. While he worked, he discovered that dawn was near, and at lengthening intervals he went out to look ahead, hoping92to see the object of his pursuit. Perhaps he would have gone on down to New Orleans, only it is not written in Mississippi weather prophecies that the tenor of one’s way shall be even.
He heard wind blowing, and felt his boat bobbing about inexplicably. He went out to look about him, and in the morning twilight he discovered that the whole aspect of the Mississippi had changed. With the invisible sunrise had come an awe-inspiring spectacle which excited in his mind forebodings and dismay.
First, there was the cold wind which penetrated his clothes and shrivelled the very meat of his bones. The river’s surface, which he had come to regard as a shimmering, polished floor, was now rumpled and broken into lumpy waves, like mud on a road, and the waves broke into dull yellow foam caps. There was not a light gleam on the whole surface, and dark shadows seemed to crawl and twist about in the very substance of the heavy and turgid waters.
Rasba stared. Born and trained in mountains, where he remembered clear streams of pale, beautiful green, catching reflections of white clouds and clean foliage, with only occasional patches of sullen clay-bank wash, he refused to acknowledge the great tawny Mississippi at its best, as a relation of the streams he knew. Certainly this menacing dawn reminded him of nothing he had ever witnessed. Waves slapped against his boat, waves which did not conceal, but rather accentuated, the sullen and relentless rush of the vast body of the water. While the surface leaped and struggled, wind-racked, the deeps moved steadily on. Elijah saw that his boat was being driven into a river chute, and seizing his sweeps, he began to row toward a sandbar which promised shoal water and a landing.93
He managed to strike the foot of the bar, and threw out his anchor rock. He let go enough line to let the boat swing, and went in to breakfast. While he was eating, he noticed that the table turned gray and that a yellowish tinge settled upon everything. When he went out to look around, he found that the air was full of a cloud that filled his eyes with dust, and that a little drift of sand had already formed on the deck of his boat, gritting under his feet. The cloud was so thick that he could hardly see the river shores; a gale was blowing, and a whole sandbar, miles long, was coming down upon him from the air. The sandbar, when he looked at it, seemed fairly to be running, like water.
Parson Rasba remembered the storms of biblical times, and better understood the wrath that was visited upon the Children of Israel.
He dwelt in that storm all that day. He shut the door to keep the sand out, but it spurted through the cracks. He could see the puffing gusts as they burst through the keyhole, and he could hear the heavier grains rattling upon the thin, painted boards of his roof. His clothes grayed, his hands gritted, his teeth crunched fine stone; he pondered upon the question of what sin he had committed to bring on him this ancient punishment.
For a long time his finite mind was without inspiration, without understanding, and then he choked with terror and regret. He had beguiled himself into believing that it was his duty to take care of Nelia Crele, the fair woman of the river. He had believed only too readily that his duty lay where his heart’s desire had been most eager. He sat there in dumb horror at the sin which had blinded him.
“I come down yeah to find Jock Drones for his mother!” He reminded himself by speaking his mission94aloud, adding, “And hyar I’ve be’n floating down looking for a woman, looking for a pretty woman!”
And because he could remember her shoes, the smooth leather over those exquisite ankles, Parson Rasba knew that his sin was mortal, and that no other son of man had ever strayed so far as he.
No wonder he was caught in a desert blizzard where no one had ever said there was a desert!
“Lord God,” he cried out, “he’p this yeah po’r sinner! He’p! He’p!”