Houseboat Girl

by Lois Lenski

  “Don’t you go away, Patsy,” called Mama. “You’re next.”

  “No,” said Patsy, “Dan’s next.”

  Just then Daddy came out.

  “Can’t leave the houseboat settin’ on this mudbank,” he said. “Time we get back from town, the river’d have run plumb away and left us. Then we’d be settin’ purty.”

  “What you goin’ to do?” asked Mama.

  “Shove her off into deep water,” said Daddy.

  “Again?” asked Mama. “Right now when I’m washin’ heads?”

  Daddy nodded. “Radio says the river’ll keep on droppin’. We should a moved off the mud sooner.”

  Daddy brought a long plank with a rope on it and threw it out to the bank. He got on the plank and with a long spike pole tried to push the houseboat away. But it did not move. Patsy jumped in the johnboat, started the motor at its stern, and soon it was running full blast and churning up the water. Milly and Mama helped Daddy push on the long spike pole, but still the houseboat did not move.

  “Wait,” said Daddy.

  The others sat down while he went to the front porch, let the stage plank down and pushed the front part of the hull off the muddy bank. There was more water around the hull there, so it was easier. He pushed till the bow was well out in the water.

  Mama called to Patsy, “What you doin’ out in that boat? You come and help us here.”

  “Doin’ what?” asked Patsy.

  “Pushin’, pushin’, just pushin’.”

  “Daddy wants me to push with the johnboat,” said Patsy.

  “Oh yes,” said Milly, “you like to get out of anything that’s real hard work.”

  “That’s right.” Mama laughed. “There’s Patsy, the dog and the cat. That’s three no-count things. That girl’s no river rat, even though she was born in the Mississippi River.”

  “Yes, I am, too, a river rat,” said Patsy. “I got a gold medal for lifesaving!”

  “Ha, ha! Like heck you did!” teased Milly.

  When Daddy came back to the stern, Mama told him, “You ought to get a man or two to do this pushing.”

  “We can make it now all right,” said Daddy. He called to Patsy and told her to shove with the motor boat as soon as they pushed.

  “I can help—let me!” said Dan.

  “You get on the bank,” said Mama. “You’re just so much excess weight. You’re too skinny for this kind of a job.”

  Dan laughed. “Want me to jump and land in the mud?”

  “Now PUSH, everybody!” shouted Daddy.

  Mama and Milly and Daddy pushed on the spike pole, but Patsy was looking the other way.

  “Patsy!” yelled Daddy. “The motor!”

  Patsy pulled the string and the motor started with a loud roar. Blackie began to bark. With the combined pushing and shoving of the whole family, the hull was dislodged from the mud and it slid into the water. Mama and Milly sank back exhausted.

  “Shut off the motor, Patsy!” yelled Daddy.

  She was out in mid-river going in circles, with the motor still running full tilt.

  “That girl!” cried Mama. “She gets to chewin’ on that chewin’ gum and lookin’ around at the scenery, and forgets to shut the motor off.”

  “You gonna wash my hair, Mama?” asked Patsy when she came in.

  “There’s not time now,” said Mama, “if we’re goin’ to town.” Mama had picked cotton during the week, even though she hated it and was a slow picker, and now she had ten hard-earned dollars in her purse. “We must be ready when Aunt Edie comes by for us in her car.”

  “Goody! Goody!” cried Patsy. “My hair’s not dirty anyhow.”

  “Patsy doesn’t even know if her hair’s dirty or not,” said Milly.

  “Now hush, you two,” said Mama. “Go get yourself cleaned up, Patsy. You, too, Dan.”

  Daddy sat on the rear deck, hung his feet over and washed them in the river. Then he went to the wash bench and washed arms, neck and face with the washcloth. He shaved at the old washstand to the left of the door. It had a small mirror hanging over it. When he went to put on his shoes, he said, “Ouch! Goin’ to town in shoes makes my feet burn like fire!”

  Mama and Patsy washed and dressed in the bedroom. Mama combed Patsy’s hair and tied a ribbon round it. She herself put on a navy blue dress with a white collar. Patsy hunted and hunted in the rack of dresses on the wall and finally chose a pretty blue dress with pink flowers. She found her blue sweater and put it on.

  Up on the road, a car horn sounded. “That’s Aunt Edie!” cried Mama. “Everybody ready?”

  “Can I go with you, Mama?” begged Bunny.

  “No, you be a good girl and stay here with Milly,” said Mama. “I can’t fool with you. Patsy and Dan are bad enough.”

  “Buy me some candy then, Mama,” said Bunny.

  Just then Patsy came out on the porch. Mama looked her over from head to foot.

  “Where are your shoes?” she asked. “You can’t go to town barefoot.”

  “Well…er…I…” began Patsy, halting. “They’re no good anyway, they don’t hardly fit me any more.” She paused. “They’re, about the right size for Bunny…Buy me some shoes, Mama.”

  “WHERE are your shoes?” asked Mama again.

  It was hard to tell Mama that her shoes were going down river like little lost boats seeking new homes on some other little river girl’s feet. Mama would not understand that.

  “Well…” Patsy began, “you know how things are always rolling off the porch…and how when you drop anything…it just jumps into the water of itself…and you know how that old river keeps goin’ and. goin’ and goin’ and never stops but takes everything along with it…”

  Beep, beep, beep sounded the horn of Aunt Edie’s car, more insistently than ever.

  “That’s enough, Patsy,” said Mama. “Why can’t you say right out that you threw them in the river? We mustn’t keep Aunt Edie waiting…”

  Daddy was already halfway up the bank, with Blackie following. Mama started over the stage plank with Dan just ahead.

  “I didn’t throw them…” said Patsy. “They practically jumped!”

  “What with you and the dog and the cat…” said Mama, leaving her sentence unfinished. She started on saying, “Milly, call the dog back.”

  “Buy me some shoes, Mama,” said Patsy. “I didn’t throw them in, I just swept them in by accident. They got right in front of my broom and I didn’t notice it until they were in the river. I didn’t mean to do it.”

  “If you’d stop your dreamin’, you’d get along a lot better,” said Mama. There was no time to scold the girl now.

  Then they were in the car driving past the cotton fields, some still white with unpicked cotton, over the levee and down the gravel road to Luxora. But they did not stop there. They kept on to Osceola. If I’d a known we was goin’ to Osceola, said Patsy to herself, I’d a saved my shoes. I don’t want the people in Osceola to see me walkin’ barefoot. But maybe then Mama will have to buy me new shoes. She cheered up at the thought.

  “Buy me some shoes, Mama,” she said aloud.

  “If the fish don’t run better, you’ll go barefoot all winter,” said Mama.”

  “Oh no, you picked cotton last week, Mama,” said Patsy.

  “Daddy needs a new shirt and Dan needs overalls and shirts and a haircut,” said Mama. “And I got to get food enough to last us a week. You’ll have to wear those old shoes of Milly’s—they’re about your size now.”

  Daddy left them to get gas and the things he needed for his boats. Mama went first to the supermarket and she and Aunt Edie came out loaded with sacks of groceries. They headed back to the car to leave them.

  The streets were crowded with cars, and the sidewalks with people. All the cotton pickers had been paid off in cash and had come to town to spend their money. Family groups, parents with children from babies to teen age were everywhere. Men and boys were leaning on the hoods and fenders of parked cars and trucks, talking.<
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  To Patsy, it seemed a year since she had set foot on a sidewalk, and the cement felt hard to the soles of her bare feet.

  “Buy me some shoes, Mama,” Patsy kept saying until Mama told her to hush.

  In her own mind, Patsy was trying to decide what kind to get. She was thinking how nice a pretty pair of red shoes would be, thinking so hard she did not watch where she was going—until she was brought up sharp by a loud scream and a screech. Mama did the screaming and the car, a strange car that appeared from nowhere, did the screeching when it stopped within six inches of Patsy’s barefeet. Dan came rushing up to pull her back to the sidewalk. Patsy had somehow gotten out into the middle of the street without realizing it.

  A, policeman came running over and spoke to Mama in a loud voice. Mama dropped one of the sacks of groceries, and Dan had to pick everything up from the sidewalk. Strange people crowded round on all sides, pushing and staring and talking. Mama was really upset.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Patsy.

  “Matter?” cried Mama. “That car nearly ran over you!”

  “She walked right out in front of that car, Mama,” said Dan, “and made the man stop.”

  “Heck!” said Patsy. “He’s got brakes!”

  “Now Patsy,” said Mama, “you’re not on the river. You’re on a street in town, and the cars are not going to go around you. I see I’ll have to show you how to cross a street.”

  “I can show her how, Mama,” said Dan. “Look, Patsy, there’s a red light. That means we’ve got to wait till it turns green. We only cross over when it’s green.”

  “I didn’t know they had buoys in town,” said Patsy, grinning.

  Mama turned to Aunt Edie. “That girl’s lived too long on the river,” she said. “You never saw a worse greenhorn in town.”

  A large man who had been standing by, laughed out loud.

  “What a girl!” he said. “Smart on the river, but not so smart in town!”

  They turned and saw that it was Andy Dillard.

  “I’ve warned her about the river, Mr. Dillard, but not about cars,” said Mama.

  Patsy spoke up, “Buy me some shoes, Mama.”

  Andy Dillard looked down at her bare feet. “She needs shoes?” he asked.

  Mama nodded, laughing. “Fish don’t bite fast enough to keep four kids in shoe leather!”

  “You come with me, Patsy.” Andy Dillard took her by the arm and started to cross the street on a green light.

  Patsy looked up in alarm. All her old fear of the man returned.

  “Where you takin’ me?” she asked.

  “You go right along with Mr. Dillard, honey,” Mama said.

  A half hour later, when Andy Dillard and Patsy came out of the shoe store, Patsy was wearing white socks and new shoes. The shoes were red strap sandals. They pinched her toes, because she had gone barefoot all summer and fall, but she did not mention it. She knew now why Daddy hated shoes and said they made his feet burn like fire. She did not mention it because hers were the most beautiful shoes in the town of Osceola and the state of Arkansas, if not in the entire United States of America.

  Mama and Aunt Edie and Dan all thought the red shoes were very nice. Patsy saw some strange girls looking at them, too, so she felt very proud. They all thanked Mr. Dillard who said it was nothing.

  “I just wanted to do something for her,” he said modestly, “since I couldn’t give her a gold medal.” He turned to Patsy. “Will you be careful now crossing the streets in town?”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Dillard,” said Patsy sweetly and softly. “I’d hate to be run over with my new shoes on.” She gave him her sweetest smile and for the first time accepted him as a friend.

  On the way home, Daddy said, “Let’s go by the river and see how it looks.”

  “It looks the same as it always did,” said Mama.

  “Let’s take the river road, Edie,” said Daddy. “I want to see what the river looks like to land folks.”

  “You afraid it might change its mind and start runnin’ upstream?” asked Aunt Edie.

  “No,” said Daddy. “But take me off this river for even half a day and I’m lost. I just can’t be satisfied to save my soul!”

  Aunt Edie laughed and drove along the river road. She stopped at gaps in the willows through which the river could be seen.

  “When I was workin’ in that factory up there in Detroit makin’ big money,” said Daddy, “I could shut my eyes, imagine I had a line on such and such a point and was catchin’ me a great big catfish! I could just see it—even when I was poundin’ metal all day long.”

  “You’re a sad case!” Mama laughed.

  “I can’t help it,” said Daddy. “Even to go to town for half a day makes me downright homesick for that old river.”

  “But Daddy,” said Patsy, “town is nice! With all those stores!”

  “The river is better,” said Daddy.

  When they got home Patsy changed clothes and skinned the cat on the porch rafter.

  One day the next week Patsy went over to Fork-a-Deer Island with Daddy and the dog Blackie to get grubworms. With the coming of cooler weather, it was too late for grasshoppers, so Daddy had to change bait to something new. He took his double-bitted axe with him, came to an old hollow log and split it open. Inside was a nest of fifty or seventy-five grubworms, that would, if undisturbed, turn into horseflies. He started to pick them up.

  “Here, take these!” Daddy gave Patsy a handful of the fat white squirming worms. “Put them in the bucket. They won’t hurt you.”

  Patsy took them in her hand, but before she found the bucket, she screamed. “They bit me! They bit a piece right out of my finger!”

  Daddy laughed. “You must have squeezed them too hard.”

  Patsy brought the bucket over. “You can put them in the bucket yourself.”

  Blackie ran sniffing around in circles, yelping.

  “Oh, look! Blackie’s after a rabbit,” said Patsy. “Go get a rabbit for our supper, Blackie!”

  Daddy went from one log to another and also split open some rotten stumps. Soon he had the bucket nearly full. “Come here, Patsy!” he called.

  There in the hollow of a log was a snake about eighteen inches long.

  “Look at this purty snake,” said Daddy.

  Patsy thought it was pretty, too. “It looks just like peppermint candy, with red stripes going round and round, but I guess I won’t eat it! Don’t kill it, Daddy. Let it go.”

  They watched the snake slide off and disappear under the fallen leaves.

  The sun was warm on the island bank when they went back to the johnboat. Blackie came up panting and exhausted, minus a rabbit.

  “This seems to be our day for snakes,” said Daddy, looking up.

  Patsy ducked. Over her head, draped over the branch of a tree, was a long brown water snake with reddish undersides spotted red and black.

  “It’s all ready to drop in the water to catch a fish or a frog,” said Daddy.

  “Just so it doesn’t drop on me,” said Patsy.

  “Don’t you want it for a pet?” asked Daddy.

  “No!” said Patsy. “Mama won’t let me have snakes. Don’t you remember she dumped that king snake of mine in the river? But I would like a turtle. I just want me a turtle so bad—a great big old one, not one of those teeny dirty mud turtles. Can’t you find me a snapper, Daddy?”

  “A snapper!” Daddy laughed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, girl. In all the trips I’ve made up and down this old river, I’ve never seen a snapping turtle. They stay deep down in the mud at the bottom of the river or in a dried-up slew. You wouldn’t want one of those fellers. They’re mean—they’ll take right after you in the boat. They weigh forty or fifty pounds, and they got a regular hawk bill and horns on their back.”

  Back at the fish barge, Daddy poured boiling water on the grubworms in the bucket.

  “That’ll make ’em tough,” he said, “so the shrimp can’t bite ’em off. Tha
t’ll give the fish a chance at them.”

  Patsy sat down and helped him bait his hooks. It took a long time because there were over six hundred grubworms. Patsy counted them. After the hooks were baited, she went out with Daddy to set his lines. She always enjoyed the river on her trips alone with Daddy. By nightfall it had turned chilly, so it was good to get back to the houseboat again.

  Inside, it was warm and cozy. A wood fire was burning in the little cast-iron stove, and Mama was making sorghum cakes for supper. A man who had a sorghum mill on the island had brought some molasses to the store and Mama had bought a gallon. She mixed a batter and poured sorghum molasses in. She cooked the batter in a big skillet like cornbread. When it was done she mixed a second batch.

  “Goody, goody!” cried Patsy. “I smell sorghum cakes!”

  Milly and Dan and Bunny came up sniffing, too.

  “I can never make enough,” Mama told Daddy. “These kids would eat a washtubful. They really like ’em!”

  “No wonder,” said Daddy. “They’re all empty clean down to their toes.”

  Tom the cat came up meowing and Blackie the dog tugged on Daddy’s pants’ leg. They were both hungry, so they had to have their share.

  Mama spoke to the pets. “You both belong to this outfit,” she said. “You’re worse than the kids, the way you like sweets. I never knew a dog and cat with a sweet tooth before.”

  When everybody was full of sorghum cakes and the other children had left the table, Patsy put her arm around Daddy’s shoulder.

  “Now that Andy Dillard’s our friend,” she said, “we’re stayin’ right here at O’Donald Bend, aren’t we, Daddy?”

  “It all depends on how the fish keep bitin’,” said Daddy.

  “Andy Dillard says there are plenty of fish in the river for you and him, too,” said Patsy.

  “Sure,” said Daddy, “if you can catch ’em. Cold weather’s comin’ soon. I can’t fish trotlines after it’s cold. Gotta get my hoop nets out. Gotta knit some new ones.”

  “If you catch lots of fish,” Patsy went on, “then you’ll get us a house, won’t you?”