The River Queen

by Mary Morris

  I decide to skip the frozen pizza and return to the boat and scramble some eggs. As I see it, outside of eating a can of Tantalizin’ Turkey, which I refuse to do, this is my only viable food option. “You guys want scrambled eggs?” I ask. They are bent over the engine with a flashlight and give me what I can only interpret as disgruntled shrugs. “Gonna get me some of that frozen pizza,” Tom says, clearly happy about this.

  We are docked beside a pool of standing water and there’s a hint of sewage in the air. The dock is illumined with yellow floodlights and the outside of our boat is covered with what looks like a million mosquitoes. I hate mosquitoes. The only one of God’s creatures I truly despise and will kill with glee are mosquitoes. Despite whatever purpose they might serve in the food chain, I have spent too many sleepless nights in shoddy hotels and sleeping bags to have any affection or sympathy for them whatsoever.

  I slip into the cabin, careful to close the door quickly. I make sure that, despite the heat, all the windows are secured. The only light in the cabin comes from the dock and the bathroom, which I assume one of the boys used while I was up at the marina. These are private fellows and this is their way.

  Hungry, I put butter into the omelette pan from Goodwill. When it’s sizzling, I pour in my Southwestern egg beaters, drizzle a little cheese on top. I’m stirring them up when I notice the buzzing sound, but I don’t pay it much heed. But as I dump the eggs onto a paper plate, the buzzing grows louder. Now I glance up and see thousands of these mosquito-like things, coating the ceiling and windows of the cabin.

  As my gaze falls on the gap between the head and the wall, I see them flying out of that lit room. I know it wasn’t me who left the light on, but I’m not assigning blame. Not exactly. Hesitantly I open the bathroom door and am greeted with a million of these creatures, lining every inch of the walls. We are completely invaded.

  I don’t know what they are. They look like mosquitoes and they buzz, but they don’t seem to bite. At least they have not bitten me yet, though my skin crawls and I feel as if they are all over me, inside my loose-fitting linen pants, my T-shirt. They have been drawn into the bathroom by the light through an open window. Jerry has yet to install the screens, which are stored in the hold. “It’s on the ‘to do’ list,” he likes to say.

  Though I do not want to do this, I scream. It is a very loud scream and Jerry yells back, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  I race onto the deck where they are still bent over the engines, fiddling with some belts, and the creatures, to which they are oblivious, buzz behind their backs and into the bathroom by the thousands. I shove the bathroom window shut. “I’m sorry,” I tell them, “but I’m having a girl moment.”

  “A girl moment?” They look at me oddly and I can tell they’re thinking hormonal.

  “There are bugs,” I explain. “Everywhere.”

  Tom and Jerry give each other one of those looks that men exchange when a woman reveals a certain kind of weakness. When a mouse crosses her path or she doesn’t know what a red flag in the end zone means. These men are hungry and tired and they have little patience for me. “I’ll check it out,” Tom says with a sigh, not even bothering to hide his exasperation.

  I stand on the deck, hyperventilating and trying to figure out how I’m going to spend the night on the boat, when I hear Tom shout, “Holy shit! This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen!”

  “I told you!” I shout back at him. “I told you it was bad!”

  I will learn later that the bugs are mayflies. They live as worms on the river’s bottom for up to three years in their larval state. Then for some inexplicable reason they burst onto the adult scene and mate in midair. The females will lay their eggs on the river’s surface and promptly die. The males have a few more hours, kicking themselves, I’m sure, under their mayfly breath, “If only I knew.”

  But sadly mayflies cannot speak. They have no mouths. Though they look like mosquitoes and buzz like them, mayflies do not bite. But they hatch by the millions, especially around brackish standing water, such as where we are moored, and they are attracted to light. This is what I have learned—and all I ever want to know—about mayflies.

  Jerry looks at me, at the screenless window of the head, and the light that’s been left on. Sheepishly he turns away as the massacre begins. We hear Tom, swearing, swatting, banging, killing whatever he can. He curses and smashes. A few moments later when Tom emerges from the bathroom, sweating and wiping his brow, the floor is a carpet of dead bugs. “This is absolutely disgusting,” I say. This time no one argues with me. “I need to vacuum.”

  “I need some frozen pizza,” Tom says.

  Though I almost never eat pizza, except on this journey, it seems, I agree that, under the circumstances, it’s the best idea. We head up to the restaurant where we all sidle up to the bar. Sally pours us beers, though Tom has, as always, his diet Dew. We order a few frozen pizzas, which Sally sticks in the microwave and in the end are rather tasty. I find myself adjusting to crust.

  Jeff who works with Sally pours us our next round of beers. Jeff has several piercings and wears a strand of cowrie shells around his neck and it is obvious to me that he’s gay. He’s probably the only gay guy in Keokuk, where I’m pretty sure it’s not an easy place to be gay.

  After we devour three frozen pizzas and a few beers, I ask—no, beg—Jeff if I can use their Internet and check my mail, which I haven’t done since I left Brooklyn. He says, “Sure,” and, as soon as I log on, I see that I have 137 unanswered messages. As I’m skimming through, deleting the junk, Jeff and I chat.

  “So what’s it like…,” I ask him as I’m waiting for my e-mail to load, “living here in Keokuk?”

  “Well,” he says with a little snicker, “I’m gay.”

  I’m a little surprised he said it right off the bat. Clearly he doesn’t mind going there. “Yeah, I thought so.…”

  “Oh yeah?” He laughs. “What gave it away?”

  “The cowrie shells,” I tell him.

  He laughs again. “Yeah, I was married for a while. Now that wasn’t going to work out. I tried, but it just wasn’t.… We’re still friends. She lives in town here. But it’s okay. Thought my dad was going to disinherit me, though.” I was wondering if Jeff meant disown, but, whatever, it didn’t sound as if it was easy for him. “But you know, we worked it out. Took a little time.”

  “What about a social life? What do you do around here?”

  He fondles his cowrie beads. “Oh, I don’t have much of a social life up here. I drive down to St. Louis for that.” Suddenly it occurs to me that we are in range of St. Louis if Jeff can drive there and have a life.

  As we’re leaving, Sally gives us two flyswatters, a can of bug fumigator, and a beautiful watermelon. Back on board, we put the watermelon in a cooler, then for about half an hour continue our nighttime activity of swatting black flies and mayflies and whatever other flies that have come into our cabin since Nauvoo, and I vacuum.

  “We should fumigate,” Jerry says, seeing that I’m getting nowhere fast and look like some kind of lunatic, flailing about in the air. I don’t want to because I’m not looking forward to sleeping in a fumigated cabin where we can’t open the windows, but there seems to be no choice. There are still bugs everywhere. I take the bug bomb that Sally gave us, hold my nose, and spray the cabin.

  Then we grab a couple beers and slip onto deck. Tom, of course, is sound asleep on his flybridge. Jerry and I are thinking we’ll have a chat, then go to sleep, but from somewhere in the marina comes the sound of incredibly loud rap music. “I don’t believe this,” I say.

  “Let’s go check it out,” Jerry says.

  We take our beers and head toward the sound of this hip-hop music. We follow the pier beside a pool of stagnant water (a happy breeding ground for mayflies, I’m sure) to where the sound is coming from. I anticipate a horde of wasted teenagers holding a wild party, but we come upon two forty-something couples at a picnic table covered with a white tablecl
oth and candles. They are, however, sloshed out of their minds.

  “Hey there,” they say, surprised to have company. “Wanta join us?” one of the men asks.

  “Is our music keeping you awake?” says the other. It would keep the devil awake, I want to say, but I refrain.

  “Oh, no,” Jerry replies. “We’re just out for a stroll.” I look at my watch. We are walking down a short pier past putrid water at midnight, but they’re too drunk to wonder. Another nautical term comes to mind. Three sheets to the wind.

  “So, you folks like a drink?” We raise our beers and decline. “You traveling?”

  We explain our mission. They are old friends on a weekend jaunt up from Quincy, where they’re from. “Nice town,” the blond wife says.

  “Yeah, my dad used to live there. How so?”

  “Oh, it’s just peaceful. It’s a pretty place to live.”

  “It’s safe,” her husband says.

  “The people are very friendly,” the other wife adds. “We moved to Quincy from Springfield and I’ve found the people very nice.”

  Her husband laughs. “Well, that was over twenty years ago.”

  For some reason she blushes when he says this.

  “You know the river changes below here,” one of the men says. “Gets narrower and faster.”

  Jerry nods, taking this in. “Hey, do you people know an island somewhere between Quincy and Hannibal where someone could have a farm?” Jerry asks this drunken crew. I look at him oddly, surprised he has remembered. “Didn’t your father go to that island?” he asks me.

  “Yes, it was an island. There was a farm. Somewhere between Hannibal and Quincy.”

  “Let’s see…” Between sips of Jim Beam and Coke, they rattle off names. Goose Island, Hogback, Cottonwood, Deadman. “Now you could have a farm on Poage, couldn’t you, dear?” one of the men offers.

  His blond, demure wife who can barely sit up without falling backward into the river nods. “You could. Or you could have one on Ward.”

  “Ward,” the other man concludes. “It would definitely be Ward.”

  I realize listening to them that the truth is I don’t know. My father never told me the name. It wasn’t in his final note to me. If I don’t know it now, I never will know. There is no asking. I am stunned by how final this feels. “Well, thank you,” I say. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

  They’ve turned the music off and want to know more of our adventure. We tell them about the storm. We tell them we’ve anchored on beaches. They look at us amazed as if Lewis and Clark just stumbled upon them on this pier. “We didn’t know you could do that,” one of the husbands says. They show us their boats—narrow cruisers named Young and Reckless and Loverboy II, with sleeping areas below. I’m wondering about Loverboy I, but am reluctant to ask.

  “Well,” Jerry says, after our tour, “we’re gonna get some shut-eye.”

  “Yeah,” they slobber, blowing out their candles. “Us too.”

  “Nice chatting with you,” Jerry says.

  “Now you have a safe journey and spend a little time in Quincy.”

  “You do that,” another one says. “Check out Quincy. It’s a real good town.”

  “And put us in your book!” one of the husbands shouts.

  “I will,” I say. As we head back to the boat, I mention to Jerry that they were very drunk.

  “Yes, they were,” he says, “but they were nice too.”

  That night I can’t sleep. Though I resist at first, I take a sleeping pill, but even as I drift off, mouthless mayflies buzz in my head.

  * * *

  In the morning we’re up early, cleaning out the boat. I’m vacuuming more dead bugs. Tom’s swabbing the deck. Jerry’s busy installing our screens. “Let’s water her down and push the bugs out the scuppers,” Jerry instructs Tom, who is on his hands and knees with a washcloth and gives Jerry an “aye aye, Sir,” salute.

  Afterward we head to the showers. Tom takes all of his belongings (he does this every time he showers)—his suitcase and Samantha Jean. She gets a bath whenever he does. I go into the girls’ shower, where, with a paper towel, I wipe down the cobwebs and the mayflies that cling to them. The shower stall itself is papered in faux library wallpaper. I have Bleak House, Mrs. Dalloway, and The Sound and the Fury in mine. When I return to the boat, Jerry is at work, installing all of our screens.

  Keokuk Lock and Dam 19 is unusually long—twelve hundred feet—and I can see how it could set a small craft record for lockage. But we are alone in this enormous space and we breeze through. Two white pelicans swimming together greet us on the other side. Afterward we hit a storm and are once more confined to the cabin.

  At Mile 359 the rain stops and the river takes on a smooth, glossy flow. We’re coming up to Lock and Dam 20 where they show a high water mark of 27.69 feet in the 1993 flood. As we are waiting for lockage, a big fish leaps into the air. Jerry says it’s an Asian carp that escaped from a fish farm during the floods.

  These carp are merciless creatures and have been making their way north. They have forged upstream through the Mississippi and up its tributaries. Their favorite food seems to be all the fish that inhabit the Great Lakes and their presence in these waters has become a major ecological concern.

  We breeze through the lock and dam. Now the houses that line the banks are all on stilts, the results of the 1993 floods. My routines have become, well, routines, simple and defined. Rise, make tasteless brew. Clean cabin. Wash dishes. Wipe dead bugs, of which there seem to be many, off the counters. Fold and refold my clothes. Read, relax. Paint or write. Or just sit at the bow and stare straight ahead. In the afternoon I will pilot if Jerry allows it. The river carries me forward in its relentless course. We are approaching my father’s territory and his presence looms. The drunken people from the night before were right: The stream narrows. It’s not nearly as wide as it is up north and it seems to quicken its flow.

  As we move past the lock and dam and Quincy isn’t far, Jerry and I pause on the bow, just gazing at the river. We are silent for a few moments and then I ask Jerry what scuppers are. “Scuppers,” I say. “You used the word this morning. You told Tom to push the dead bugs out of the scuppers.”

  Jerry nods, remembering. “It’s those holes in the gunwales,” he says. “They’re so you can swab the deck. Rinse it off and the water will go out. You know you can put scupper valves on so that a boat doesn’t take on a lot of water. I heard about a guy once who had a small commercial vessel, nice little boat he used to take people out fishing. He put scupper covers on, but he put them on backward. They ran into a storm and they took on a lot of water, but it didn’t drain. They didn’t know where the water was coming from and before they figured it out, they lost an engine, which can happen if you get an engine soaked. And then the boat broached and then—” Jerry makes a whistling sound through his teeth and a hand motion which seems to indicate a boat going down.

  “And then?”

  “Two people drowned. Just a little mistake, but that’s what can happen if you do something wrong. You don’t even have time to bend over and kiss the ground.”

  29

  WHEN I was young, my mother had a passion for Abraham Lincoln. She was proud of the fact that the president who freed the slaves came from her home state of Illinois. I don’t remember my mother reading that much literature when I was a girl, but she had shelves and shelves of books on Lincoln. Biographies, historical accounts, his speeches and writings. She was actually a bit of a Lincoln scholar, definitely a buff. She used to say if television existed during the Lincoln-Douglas debates, he would never have been elected because he was ugly and had a high, squeaky voice.

  Later, for mysterious reasons, her affections for powerful men switched to such role models as O. J. Simpson and William Kennedy Smith, but in my formative years it was Lincoln who attracted her. My parents were actually married on the same date as Lincoln was assassinated—a fact that, despite my mother’s interest in the president from Illinoi
s, was perhaps lost on them, but not on me.

  When I was ten or so and my brother seven or eight, our mother took us to Springfield, Illinois. We saw the Lincoln museum, the capital building, the log cabin where Abe was said to have lived. I recall that log cabin. How it seemed so tiny for a man who grew to be so big in every sense of the word. My mother was quick to point out that such greatness came from such modest beginnings. We paused before the table where Lincoln as a young student read by candlelight late into the night.

  My mother was a progressive in her politics. This was one of the many ways she and my father differed. He was a lifelong conservative (he and I fought bitterly during the Vietnam War years), though he voted for Clinton and Kerry before he died. But my mother espoused liberal causes, even if she did not exactly live by them in her own life.

  Once, though, after the Chicago riots of 1968, she accosted a group of Weathermen at a lunch counter. She asked them how many people were members of their organization and they gave her a rather small number. Then she asked how many people rioted during the Democratic convention and they gave her a much larger number. “Oh, just like my synagogue,” she told the scruffy crew of boys as she paid for her cup of coffee and sandwich. “Nobody pays dues, but everyone shows up for the holidays.” The only time I ever saw her weep over anyone was when John F. Kennedy was killed. And she always forgave Bill Clinton his sins, which she considered “nobody’s business but his own.”

  Though I cannot say that my relationship with my mother has ever been uncomplicated, she always emphasized reading, learning, knowledge of the world. Not that she was a big reader, but I was. As a girl I read everything I could get my hands on. When I was reading a book I truly loved, my mother let me stay home from school. She wrote letters to my teachers saying I was ill and needed to stay in bed. At least the latter part was true. I finished Little Women, Jane Eyre, and Gone With the Wind in this way. When I returned to school and the nurse asked how I was feeling, I had to remember to lie.

  We leave the main channel and sail up a tight canal past Bay Island. Egrets line the banks as we make our way to the Quincy Bay Small Boat Harbor, where we tie up at the courtesy dock. Tom and Jerry opt for a long lunch at the marina restaurant, but I want to see the town.