by Mary Morris
“Hmm,” Jerry says, “now that’s a good question. Let me tell you what happened to my friends, Pete and Jenny. They had a bad marriage to start with, but they were out boating one day and he was going too fast so she wanted to slow them down and he said no so she got angry and went over, trying to pull the throttle back, but she pulled the shift instead and threw the boat into reverse. Melted down the whole transmission.” Jerry pauses for effect. “The marriage ended shortly thereafter.”
I am careful in the wind and rain as I lean into the shift. A few moments later we get a call from the lockmaster and I breathe a sigh of relief. For whatever reason, the tow and barge has decided to fall back and let us go ahead. “Why’re they doing that?” I ask as Jerry takes the wheel to maneuver into the lock. “Well, it could be he has to wait for something. Or it could also be, because of the storm, that he just wants us out of his way. My guess is he wants us gone before he goes ahead.” As we move into position on the lock, the barge workers wave. One waves from the rear, but I don’t see him so I don’t wave back until Tom says, “Mary, he’s waving at you,” so I wave again.
We pass the tow and barge, slosh a little in its wake as we ease our way into the lock. The lockmaster in a yellow slicker awaits us. “Not a bad day to be a duck,” Tom greets the lockmaster as we wait for him to let us through.
“Ducks know enough to stay out of the rain,” the lockmaster says. Just then a huge bolt of lightning cracks above us and I scream my head off.
“Bow into the wall,” Jerry says.
“Well, you don’t have to get pissy,” Tom snaps back.
“Hey,” Tom says to the lockmaster, pointing to the back of the lock as the gates are closing, “you sprung a leak.”
“Yeah, gotta fix that one,” the lockmaster says as the water rushes in behind us. I’m standing in the pouring rain. Another crack of lightning right above us, the kind that sounds like a firecracker going off in your brain, and I scream again. Tom laughs his head off. The lockmaster laughs too.
“You can go ahead when I open,” he tells us. “No need to wait for the horn on a day like today.” The lockmaster leaves us now. “Have fun,” he says. “Be safe.”
As we leave behind Lock 18 we are listening to the National Weather Service. Chance of rain 60 percent, which I could have told them. Rain may produce hail. Jerry doesn’t like this. Hail can damage a boat. Hail is not good for the windshields or the nicely painted fiberglass coat.
“What d’ya think, Tom? Should we head south or tie up behind the wall? Maybe under some trees or something?”
I’m praying for south. I do not want to stay in this fork lightning storm. I really do not want to stay in one place. Tom’s staring at the sky. I have no idea what he’s looking for or what he sees. “Just looks like a lot of rain. I think we’re okay to head south.” Though there is no hail, we are on a river of driving rain. Everything in the cabin is wet and lightning crackles all around us. We opt not to stop in Burlington, Iowa, though I’d wanted to. In this storm there’s no point.
In the gray mist and drizzle we spot a tow, pulling a boat upriver. It comes upon us like a phantom, and, as she approaches, Tom and Jerry realize that the tow is dragging the Princess back to La Crosse. This is the boat Jerry was supposed to move south before he decided upon doing our trip. It is also the boat that Greg Sadowski was piloting when Katrina hit.
On the radio we hear a tow driver refer to her as “an elegant yachtlike boat,” but now we see her for what she became after the storm. Her hull has a deep, battered gash. The windows on her starboard side are smashed and boarded up. There is a silence on board as she passes us going north. Jerry shakes his head. “She’s a shadow of her former self,” he says.
I lie down to take a nap. As I curl up in my nook, I hear a sound under the bed. A desperate, heavy breathing. I look down and see the bleary eyes of Samantha Jean, terrified by the lightning, who has found a safe refuge below me. I ponder this for a moment. Then get up and go to the fridge. I return with a scrap of salami and slip it to her under the bed.
27
IN THE 1840s Joseph Smith claimed he was guided by an angel to a place where he found gold plates on which prophets had written divine revelations. Smith founded the Mormon church in upstate New York, then led a small band of followers to Nauvoo, Illinois. Within a few years his following rose to ten thousand and Nauvoo became the second largest town in Illinois, after Chicago.
Considered to be a charlatan by some and a philanderer by others (apparently his belief in polygamy grew out of his own marital woes), Smith made enemies along the way. During a bloody conflict the original temple was destroyed and Joseph Smith was killed. Soon afterward the Mormons set off on their journey to Utah. Two years ago the fully refurbished church, closed to non-Mormons, was reopened.
The new church looms high on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi. Nauvoo was once the center of the Mormon world and is still viewed as a sacred place by the church. Smith had referred to Nauvoo as “the loveliest place and the best people under the heavens,” and I wanted to see it. Jerry did too. But, as we approach after the storm, there is no boat landing. The bank of the river on the Illinois side is all farmland. Then Jerry spots a grain elevator and beside it are two barges. Tom and Jerry look at each other and give a shrug. “We’ll tie up here,” Jerry says.
I am astonished. “But that’s private property.”
They look at me as if this is a foreign concept. “As they say in Thailand”—Jerry throws up his arms—“c’est la vie.”
We are like pirates as we make our way toward the rusty barge, which is riding low in the water. The grain elevator is operating. Yellow kernels fly down a belt, then up into the silos. Others rain down onto the ground. Jerry maneuvers the River Queen against the side of the barge. But he doesn’t like where he’s come in so he reverses and moors our bow to the stern of the barge.
We tie up and Tom opts, as he almost always does, to stay with Samantha Jean and the boat. Jerry will go exploring with me. Tom steadies me with his strong arm as I leap onto the rusty barge, which shifts under my weight. Then I jump to the land. It is the first time on this journey that I put my feet on Illinois soil. I feel the solid earth, corn kernels beneath my sandals. It is not so different from Iowa, but it’s home to me.
The path from the barge to the loading dock is paved with golden corn. Everything around us is corn. Jerry and I tromp through muck and corn around the silo, which churns and grinds and the noise is deafening. Jerry finds his way around the silo and inside to talk to the elevator operator. Kernels rain down as the operator explains he can’t be responsible for what happens to us or our boat, and he’s going to pretend we aren’t here.
This is fine with us. “We won’t be more than an hour,” Jerry says, checking out the sky and time of day. We cut across the silo property where Jerry points to the safety ladders coming down the sides. “This way you only fall six feet instead of sixty.” I nod, glad he explains things in this way to me.
Heading into Nauvoo, we walk by an old quarry from which the original Mormon temple here was built. We pass fields of corn, historic houses with little plaques on them that give a feel of what life was like in the 1840s. We keep trying to get to the temple, but the closer we get, the further it seems to drift away. It is a mirage, an illusion.
There are no shops, no town. At least nothing we can walk to as we keep trudging toward the steeple. Just these historic red brick houses with no one around. There is a ghostlike feel, as if the place had been struck by a neutron bomb. On a tennis court we come upon a group of kids, maybe two dozen teens, playing some kind of game with a sheet and a volleyball. They are all blond and smiling. They seem to be having too much fun. They don’t notice us as we pass. The temple remains far away, even as we approach it.
Nauvoo spooks us out. Jerry starts calling the place “Nauvoodoo.” “Let’s get out of here,” he says and I agree. As the light is fading, Jerry goes ahead of me to get the boat ready and mak
e sure the engines are going to start. He definitely wants to leave before dark. I am slower and, as I walk on the path that takes me through the grain elevator, I see that the operator is in the office.
The office is filled with small plastic boxes with labels that read WALK PROGRAM CORN, BUTTER AND HARDY PROGRAM CORN. The grain operator is a short, stocky man with a round face, wearing a hard hat. He seems uncomfortable when I walk into the office.
“Excuse me,” I say, “I’m sorry to bother you.” He doesn’t say anything. “But I’m with that boat. The one that’s tied up to your barge.” He still doesn’t say anything and I have a feeling he’s afraid that somehow he’s going to get in trouble. “I’m a writer,” I tell him, and then perhaps to make him more at ease, “a journalist. Can you tell me something about the grain here? Have you been slow because of New Orleans and the drought?”
“Well, don’t quote me, all right? I mean, I wouldn’t want you to quote me.”
“I’m just curious…”
“Well,” he tips his hard hat back a bit, “we were running low for a couple weeks, but we’re riding hot and heavy now. We’re getting ready to load.” I ask if he thinks this means the Port of New Orleans is going to be opening soon and again he asks me not to quote him, but, “We’re getting ready to load.” Our corn, he tells me, goes all over the world. But mostly to Japan.
“Japan?”
“For beer,” he says. “The Japanese buy almost all our corn for their beer.”
* * *
All across the prairie, golden wheat blew in the wind. There were miles of it, flat and waving, seas of winter wheat. When it was ready, the farmers of Illinois, Nebraska, Iowa harvested it, separating the grain from the chaff, then drove their truckloads to the grain elevators where the farmers were paid by the bushel. Winter wheat had already been bought in autumn. September wheat was sold in July.
The farmers were never happy with the price their crops brought. They grumbled and complained among themselves but in the end they had no choice. They took what was offered whether it was a dollar or seventy-five cents to the bushel. They took what was offered because already, months before, some manufacturer had already bought their wheat.
Then Pillsbury or General Mills purchased the grain to make bread and cakes, store-bought items, and what had once flowed like a sea in the prairie was now shipped to the giant mills. As he sat in the order booth, my father tried to make sense out of the journey of the wheat. Or the corn. How it was so young and went so far. How so much happened in its short life. He pictured it in fields and silos, on trains and mills. He was a man who wanted to go places and he was filled with envy.
His hands shot up from the booth as the orders came in. Buy and he waved toward his chest. Sell and he pushed his hand away. A closed fist meant a dollar. Five shakes of the fist, five dollars. Thumbs-up was seven/eighths of a dollar. He showed me once how, when he worked on the Board of Trade, he shot back the same signals, confirming purchases and sales.
During World War II my father lived with a Quaker family. When he talked, they hung on his every word. Once he asked them, “What is it? How is it possible that everything I say is so interesting to you?”
The Quakers laughed and explained they weren’t listening to his words. “You talk with your hands,” they said, keeping their own demurely folded in their laps.
My father did talk with his hands. It was as if he was conducting a conversation, rather than just speaking it. He talked about business. Futures, commodities. The grain markets. Soy, wheat, barley, corn. He’d point to his chest. “Buy!” I’d shout with glee. Or gesture away with a raised fist. “Sell!”
* * *
We sail from Nauvoo beneath a popcorn sky—a bucket of bumpy white and yellow clouds that spill across the horizon. We’ve taken on swarms of flies and Tom jokes that “this is why they call it the flybridge.” Tom says we took them on at the grain elevator where we tied up at Nauvoo. “Lots of flies there,” Tom says as he swats them with his bare hands. I’ve gone topside and am piloting as Tom smashes flies with his broad, bloodied palms on this clear, summer evening. Then he flicks them off the deck into the wind.
The channel is wide and goes into a gentle bend so Jerry thinks the risk of me wreaking havoc is slim. “Keep an eye on her, will you, Tom?” I must admit that I don’t like being spoken of in the third person when I am sitting right there, but I try to ignore it.
“So you liked Nauvoo?” Tom asks as he brings his wide hands together and mushes another fly between them. He picks the fly up by its still quivering wings and flicks it overboard.
“Not really,” I tell him. “Spooky place.”
He nods. He’s brought the tin of molasses cookies Jerry’s mother made and, between fly smashing, reaches in and eats them by the handful. “Nauvoodoo,” Tom says, imitating Jerry. He offers me the tin.
“Naw. Thanks.”
“You know what you need,” Tom says, munching on a cookie with his bloodied mitt. “You need to kick off your heels and relax.” He whacks at the air and catches two. He rubs my head before I can flinch. I’m praying for a marina with showers at Keokuk, where we’re headed.
“Hmm…” I’m a little stuck on how one kicks off one’s heels. I think it’s heels you kick up and shoes you kick off. But for the time being I’m just trying to stay in the main channel.
He smashes a few more flies, wipes the blood on his trousers. “Oh, you know. Lighten up, goof off.” He jabs at my arm with a bloody paw. “Rock ’n’ roll.”
“I’m trying,” I say. “You mean be an idiot like you?”
“That’s right,” he says, dipping back into the cookies. “You sure you don’t want some?”
“No thanks. I’ll pass.”
The popcorn sky fades and turns a deep purple. As soon as it gets dark, Jerry takes over below. He is getting nervous. I can feel it. It’s palpable on board. He doesn’t like the river at night. There are deadheads and wing dams and snags you can’t see. It’s not like when Mark Twain traveled in these parts, but both Jerry and Tom assure me you can still meet your maker here.
On our radio we chat with a nearby tow, the Mark Schonen. He’s pushing a six-hundred-foot barge downstream—one of the first barges, riding hard and heavy downstream, we’ve seen. Even I recognize his Cajun accent by now. We’ve been passing him and following him in the storm we were in all day. Now it is the blackest of nights and Jerry has a big frown on his face. The tow captain tells us to follow him and he’ll get us to a marina in Keokuk.
I don’t understand what we’re doing, but, as it gets darker, we travel in the Mark Schonen’s wake at five miles per hour. I find this pace in the darkness so tedious I could scream. “Why’re we going so slowly?” I ask Jerry. I am ready to eat, relax, walk on the planet Earth. And once again I am longing for a shower.
“Because he knows the way,” Jerry says, his voice tinged with annoyance. “Because he has radar.” His eyes are fixed on the river and he hasn’t got time or the inclination to talk to me. We follow at this impossibly slow speed, only slightly faster than if we cut our engines altogether. We hang back in the wake of the tow and barge and in the blackness it feels as if this will take forever.
It is close to nine o’clock when the towboat pilot shines his beacon at a landing. We gaze toward the west bank and there is a dock. As we approach Keokuk, the towboat lights our way. Once he sees that we’ve spotted the landing, he gives two blasts of his horn, then he disappears into the darkness, but for a long time we can see his wake.
MAYFLIES
28
“WHEN I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was to be a steamboatman,” Twain writes in Life on the Mississippi. He tells of the two packet boats a day that chugged into Hannibal. One came from St. Louis. The other from Keokuk. And after those boats came and went, “the day was a dead and empty thing.”
As we pull into the marina at the Keokuk Y
acht Club, I note the significant absence of steamboats or river life or fanfare. It is hard to imagine this Iowa town as a bustling dock as it was in Twain’s time. But indeed the huge Victorian homes that line the bluffs, which we will see in the morning, attest to Keokuk’s glorious past.
I muse over what has become of these river towns. I recall my conversation with Cindy back in Muscatine and think how the malls and the automobile and the end of the steamboat business and the pearl button factories have decimated them all. As we pull up to the dock, Sally greets us. She’s a friendly dark-haired woman with a slightly weathered look as if she’s been at this marina too long, and she tells us we’ve got to change docks if we want to fuel up, which we do. “Fuel dock’s back there,” Sally says.
“Well, Mary,” Jerry says. “You wanta fuel up or you wanta hop off?”
“I’ll go check out the facilities,” I tell them as they move the boat. Up at the marina there’s a nice outdoor shower stall, but it’s filled with cobwebs and spiders and I decide to wait for morning when I can see them. The marina restaurant is empty except for a few stragglers who have clearly had one too many, listening to old Kenny Rogers tunes. The smell of cigarette smoke fills the room. The only available food is frozen pizza. One wall is covered with historic pictures. Apparently the Keokuk Lock and Dam 19, which is just below us, holds the title in The Guinness Book of World Records for Small Craft Lockthrough (88 small craft). This achievement is immortalized in a photo of dozens of people in their bathing suits and Bermuda shorts, holding lines. What a contrast this is to the empty river we’ve been on, so devoid of life.
