Houseboat Girl

by Lois Lenski

  “A house?” said Daddy. “You hankerin’ for a house again? What’s the matter with this houseboat? It’s a sight better than these little old shacks the sharecroppers live in. I thought you was a borned houseboat girl. What’s the matter with the river, I’d like to know?”

  “Nothing,” said Patsy. “It’s still the same old river. But I’d like a house up on the river bank. I wouldn’t want to be a long ways off from the river, you understand…I’d like it to be where I could look out the windows and see it sometimes …”

  Daddy laughed and laughed. “Spoken like a real river girl!” he said. “She wants to get, away from the river, yet she don’t want to get away from it. The river’s in your blood, girl. You just can’t help it.”

  “Oh no,” said Patsy. “My blood’s not all river. I like town, too.”

  “You’re just not town-broke,” said Mama with a laugh. “Anybody that doesn’t know how to cross a street on a green light!”

  “Couldn’t we get a house up on the river bank?” asked Patsy again.

  “Now, Patsy,” said Mama, “you stop naggin’ your daddy. He’s tired tonight. When that girl sets her mind on something she wants, she won’t give a body peace until she gets it. Of all my kids, she’s the nagginest!”

  “Your mother’s right, Patsy,” said Daddy. “Stop your nagging.”

  “It’s only a house I want,” said Patsy. “A house on the river bank.”

  “A house!” scolded Mama. “Only a house—as if we was livin’ in a tent, I s’pose.”

  “If we stay here all winter,” said Daddy, “we’ll get up on the river bank all right.”

  “We will?” cried Patsy eagerly.

  “The river will take us up and set us right down whether we want to go or not,” said Daddy.

  “Just wait till high water comes long about February,” said Mama.

  “High water?” asked Patsy.

  “That’s when the people in houses get in trouble,” said Daddy, “even the people with their houses set high on stilts like all those up the river road to Tomato. But high water’s no trouble to a shantyboater. He’s not anchored down to one spot. He just goes up and down, up and down as the river goes. So he’s perfectly safe.”

  Patsy looked out the window at the high mudbank rising from the shallow river. The houseboat was so low now, she could not see any sign of store or road above. It was hard to imagine that the houseboat would be lifted all the way up there on a rising river. What a terrific amount of water it would take to fill that great deep river valley!

  “Wait till the winter snows melt up there in the north and all that water comes pouring down the Ohio, the Missouri and Mississippi rivers!” said Daddy. “We’ll get up on top of the river bank all right!”

  “Oh goody!” cried Patsy. “Up on top of the river bank! I can hardly wait!”

  CHAPTER XI

  A House for Patsy

  PATSY AND DAN APPEARED on the river bank, pulling something behind them. “What’s that you got?” asked Daddy.

  “It’s a Christmas tree,” said Patsy. “Dan and I got it in the woods. Tomorrow’s Christmas. You’ll have to move those nets, so we can get in.”

  Daddy shook his head. “Can’t move them till I get done.”

  “We’ll set it up in the living room, Dan,” Patsy said. She started across the stage plank, but Daddy’s great hoop nets on hoops four feet in diameter, covered the entire porch and blocked her path. She and Dan sat down on the stage plank to wait.

  “Daddy’s in the knittin’ business,” said Mama. “Don’t bother him now.”

  Mama sat in an easy chair with a warm coat on, untangling a great mass of twisted Nylon fish cord.

  “This stuff has got into nine hundred and ninety-nine knots,” she said. “Nylon is terrible, it tangles so bad.”

  “But it will last ten times as long,” said Daddy. “That acid in the river water eats the cotton lines up in no time.”

  “I’d rather sew on my quilts,” said Mama. “When I’m shut in all winter long, I don’t do a thing but piece quilts. I want to get that Flower Garden done soon…”

  Abe Foster was busy knitting hoop nets for winter fishing. His wooden shuttle moved briskly in and out. Seven large hoops were already joined together with a knotted crisscross netting. Now he was working on two “throats”—narrow openings where the fish could go in but not get out. He hung the tail of the net to a porch rafter and let the hoops fall.

  “They’re purty,” he said, looking at his handiwork, “when you get ’em done without any tar on ’em. They’re even purty after they’re tarred. Not everybody can build a nice net like that! Andy Dillard buys his ready-made, but he can have that kind. I wouldn’t give fifteen cents for a ready-made net.”

  “But, Daddy, our Christmas tree!” cried Patsy impatiently. “We got to set it up and get it trimmed.”

  “Where you goin’ to put it?” asked Mama.

  “Inside—in the front corner by the window,” said Patsy.

  “It’s too hot in there,” said Mama, “with the heater so close. All the needles would fall off before night.”

  On the porch where the old leather car seat had sat as a couch all summer, a barrel of oil had been placed on wooden horses. A pipe from the barrel ran under the hull and through the floor in the front room to feed the heater. Although the houseboat walls were only of wallboard covered with wallpaper, the rooms stayed cozy and warm, helped by the heat of the sun on the flat roof and the wood fire in the little cast-iron stove in the kitchen.

  “Your mama keeps it hot enough inside to roast the cat!” said Daddy. “I can’t stand it to come indoors hardly.”

  “But where can I put the tree then?” asked Patsy.

  “Out here on the porch will be better,” said Mama.

  “But there’s no room,” said Patsy. “Look at all the junk. Look at those big old hoop nets of Daddy’s. Why does he have to build nets on Christmas?”

  “We have to eat on Christmas, too, honey,” said Mama. “Let’s see how big your tree is.”

  Dan stood it up on the stage plank and they looked at it.

  “It’s not very big…” said Mama doubtfully.

  “It’s the biggest one we could find,” said Dan. “I chopped it down myself.”

  “It looked lots bigger out in the woods,” said Patsy.

  “I’ll tell you what you can do,” said Mama. “Do you want to put electric lights on it?”

  “Oh yes! We do!” cried Patsy and Dan.

  “I think I brought that old string of lights from River City,” said Mama. “Let’s put the tree up on the electric washer, right at the corner there, where everybody can see it, fish customers and all. Then you can plug the light cord in at the washer outlet.”

  “Goody! Goody!” cried the children. “Oh, how pretty that will be.”

  After it was decided that the Fosters were staying in O’Donald Bend for the school year at least, Daddy brought an electric wire from the pole up on the road to the houseboat. So they stopped using the kerosene lamps and had bright lights to see, and read by, and Mama was able to use her electric washer. It had been brought from the rear to the front porch. Mama still heated her water in the iron kettle over a wood fire on the bank. But it was handier for her to carry it and put it in the washer on the front porch, instead of going around on the guard.

  The river had been gradually rising since November with the fall rains, so the houseboat was now about halfway up the bank. Daddy finished his knitting, hung his hoop nets out of the way and built a base for the Christmas tree. Patsy hung a few shiny balls on it, plugged in the light cord and Dan turned the switch on. The tree looked very pretty with its bright sparkling lights shining in the darkness.

  Patsy and Dan ran up to the road and said they could see it plainly from there. On Christmas day a heavy snow came and laid a carpet of white over everything—over the mud bank and assorted fishing gear, over the great flat roof of the houseboat, over the boats tied by the
porch and over the bare branches of the trees on the river bank. Aunt Edie and Uncle Seth came down to dinner and Mama roasted a duck that Daddy had shot over on the island. There were presents for the children and everybody had a happy time.

  On Christmas afternoon Daddy had to run his nets as usual. Patsy went with him in the johnboat down to the end of the chute. The long line of hoops connected by nets hung sideways in the water, near the bottom of the river. On one end of the long line was a weight to act as anchor, on the other end a bottle buoy to float. Daddy raised the first hoop up and rolled the net up on the boat. He shook the fish forward and dumped them out in the bottom of the boat.

  “Oh, look at that big tow coming!” cried Patsy. “Remember that crazy pilot who nearly busted into our houseboat up at New Madrid and broke all our ropes?”

  “I sure do,” said Daddy. “A good pilot can steer a line of barges through the eye of a needle, but here they can’t take them around a bend without hittin’ somebody.”

  “I’ll never forget that towboat,” said Patsy. “The cook had a great big bunch of bananas hanging out on deck. I was wishin’ that old towboat would sink, so you and me could go out and get those bananas!”

  Daddy laughed. “You’re some banana girl!”

  The towboat was coming up river fast. The barges were filled with green sulphur loaded high as a house, to be used in making steel and glass. Daddy and Patsy watched the outfit come closer and closer. Daddy’s distant sight was unusually good.

  “It looks like the Bessie P to me,” he said. “Golly, I do believe it is the Bessie P! I haven’t seen Captain Leonard for a coon’s age. He’s bought fish from me many and many a time.”

  “Why, the tow is slowing up, Daddy,” said Patsy.

  Daddy started his motor and went closer. Suddenly he heard a man’s friendly voice, magnified over a loud speaker. “Got any turtles today, Big Abe?” The voice was so loud it could be heard for five miles.

  Daddy slapped his knee in delight. “It is Captain Leonard sure as shootin’! He’s the turtle-eatin’est man ever I did see! Look, he’s stopping the tow…he’s not supposed to do that, but he’s an old friend! Imagine him spottin’ me clear across this old river, and callin’ me by name! We’ll go over and see him.”

  The towboat waited until Daddy came alongside. Several deckhands looked down from the barges and grinned. Captain Leonard wanted all the turtles he could get. Fortunately the haul of the hoop nets had brought up half a dozen. Daddy loaded up the basket the cook let down on a rope. Daddy and the captain talked and reminisced. When the basket came back down it held a surprise—apples and oranges and a huge stalk of bananas.

  “Bananas!” cried Patsy. “Look at all the bananas!”

  “This here’s my banana girl!” Daddy told Captain Leonard. “Patsy will do most anything short of sinkin’ a towboat and goin’ to jail to get herself a bunch of bananas!”

  The men talked and then the captain asked, “Did you ever eat any deer meat, Big Abe?”

  “No,” said Daddy. “Rabbit’s more my style, and the island’s full of them. When the fish don’t bite, we eat rabbit. My wife says we’ve eaten so many this winter, she thinks we’ll soon all start hopping!”

  The captain spoke to the cook who tossed down a hunk of venison. “Try it on the kids!” he said. “I think you’ll like it! Merry Christmas!”

  Soon the Bessie P began to move again, while Daddy and Patsy watched from a safe distance. What a surprise it was to bring all the fruit to the other children. Daddy hung the stalk of bananas to the rafter beside the Christmas tree.

  “Don’t make yourselves sick eatin’ bananas,” said Mama.

  Winter had come now in earnest. With melting snows in the north, the Mississippi River rose higher and higher, taking the Foster houseboat with it. Up, up it went past the old campfire where Mama used to heat water and wash her clothes, past the trees where Patsy’s hens’ nests had been nailed for so long, past Mama’s clothesline and the big iron vat where Daddy tarred his hoop nets, past the open space where Aunt Edie used to park her car and on up to the road. Each day the plunder on the bank had to be moved higher—the chicken coop, washpot, the piles of driftwood, old baskets, nets, hoops, salvaged planks, scraps of iron and assorted junk, all the things that might come in handy some day.

  In January it snowed again. One day when Patsy came running from the school bus, she slipped on the snow on the stage plank and fell into the water with a great splash. She got her jacket, jeans and boots wet and muddy.

  “Well!” Mama put her hands on her hips and looked at her. “Some one has to go in now and then,” she said, “to let us know how cold the water is.”

  Milly teased. “Patsy got a gold medal for lifesaving, but she can’t save herself!”

  Dan helped pull her out and Bunny helped her take her boots off. Blackie came up and licked her face, and after she put on dry clothes, Tom the cat jumped into her lap to cuddle there.

  In February the river reached its crest after rising three or four feet daily. Now Patsy learned again what high water meant. Now the Fosters were really up on top of the river bank. Their whole point of view was so changed, it was hard to remember how it used to be so far down below in the summer. Now the houseboat seemed to be set in the middle of a great vast shallow lake stretching as far as eye could see.

  “I want it to get still higher,” said Patsy, “so we can boatride all around over the fields.”

  One day Patsy and Dan started out to explore in their own red rowboat. Daddy had mended the leaks and made it serviceable. But the ride was not as much fun as they had thought it would be. The river road to Tomato was entirely under water. All the cotton fields were lakes now. The people in the houses were safe because their homes were set up high on stilts, but there were completely cut off and isolated. They could not use cars or trucks, but had to travel by boat.

  “What will they do if the river comes up over their floor?” asked Patsy.

  “They’ll have to get in their boats and go somewhere else,” said Dan, “somewhere over on the other side of the levee.”

  Maybe living in a house was not so desirable after all. Patsy thought about Grace Eva and Brenda Collins and the other children up the road. What about the Dillard boys and the Harris kids? How were they going to get to school? The school bus had stopped coming to the store corner. It came only as far as the levee now, and the levee was a whole mile inland, due to changes in the course of the river.

  “We’ll all just have to stay home from school till the river goes down,” said Dan philosophically.

  “But I like school,” said Patsy. “I don’t want to stay home.”

  “Maybe Daddy will take us in the johnboat,” said Dan.

  When they returned to the houseboat, they found that Daddy had tied it up to the big old sycamore tree right by his Fish Dock sign. The houseboat now sat in the middle of what had been the river road. It was only a stone’s throw over to the Harrises’ store. Patsy waved from her porch to Joella on hers, but the girls could not get together except by boat.

  Patsy asked Daddy about the houses up the river road. “Is the river goin’ to wash them away? They can’t go up and down with the water the way we do.”

  Daddy laughed. “You think a houseboat’s pretty nice now, don’t you, honey? Well, those houses have been there a long time and I reckon they’ll stay a little longer. When the river gets so high, all of a sudden it can’t go higher and then it will start goin’ down again.

  “But how will we ever get to the school bus?” asked Patsy.

  “The water’s too deep to wade,” said Dan. “I tried it.”

  “You would,” said Mama.

  Daddy answered Patsy’s question by getting out the johnboat on the next school day and starting the motor. He made trips back and forth across the flooded cotton fields, carrying the river children over to meet the school bus and bringing them home again at night.

  Spring came, a very wet spring. On April fifth, t
he river gauge was thirty-five feet. “That’s the crest, I think,” said Daddy. “Now it will start going down again. I got to be ready to catch the drop just right, if we’re goin’ to beach the houseboat.”

  Patsy clapped her hands. “Are we going to beach it and stay on land?”

  “Ask your mama,” said Daddy.

  Yes, it was true. Mama had decided she had had enough of the river for a while and she wanted a change.

  “I’m tired of the river,” said Mama. “I’m tired of all this mud and of wading to this boat. Seems like I just got to get on dry land for a while or go crazy. We’ll try it for the summer anyway and see how we like it.”

  “The mosquitoes will be bad,” warned Daddy, “and it’ll be hot as the dickens up here on the bank, without the river breeze.”

  “We’ll try it anyhow,” said Mama.

  “You’ll be glad to get back on the river again in a few months,” said Daddy.

  “Yes, I know,” said Mama. “I’m as bad as you. When I quit goin’ to the river, I’ll be dead.”

  So Big Abe Foster asked George Milburn if he could beach. When he came back, he reported, “Mister George says the spot is ours and we can do what we want. He sure is nice to us—and there’s no rent to pay.”

  When the water was just right, Daddy swung the houseboat around to the location he had chosen—off the road, at the brow of the hill, under the trees and beside a level stretch for clothesline and a garden. He cut blocks three feet long and eight inches thick and put three under side of the houseboat, fastened them to the hull and let the water go out from under it until the houseboat was resting on the blocks. When the water left, he jacked it up and leveled it off.

  “It’s a house now!” cried Patsy, delighted. “It’s not a boat any more.”

  “We’ll have to wait for another high water to move from this spot,” said Daddy.

  “A whole year in a house on land!” cried Patsy.

  “That sounds terrible,” said Daddy, “but you and your mother have been pestering me so…You’re goin’ to die of the heat in summer.”