by Mary Morris
We pull up alongside despite the very obvious cold shoulder. “I’m sorry to bother you. I see how much you’re working here,” Jerry says, “but we’re low on fuel. Can you help us out?”
“Nope,” is our one-word reply. This is starting to feel like an outtake from Deliverance and Tom and Jerry are uncomfortable as well.
“Know where we can?”
“Twenty-two miles south at Kentucky Dam.”
We look at one another. “We aren’t going to make that,” Jerry says.
“Can’t we just get gas from a gas station?” I ask them, and they nod. It seems that we can. “So … why don’t we?”
Tom and Jerry agree that we’ll go back to Paducah, where there’s a courtesy dock. We’ll tie up there and see if we can’t figure out how to take our gas drums to the nearest gas station. None of us is very optimistic, but it’s worth a shot.
Paducah, Kentucky, is a pretty hip town. Known for its harness racing at the Players Bluegrass Downs, it also has lots of cute shops, restaurants, old cobblestone streets, and a river history museum. This is the place where John Banvard began his artistic career modestly enough on the banks of the Ohio.
Tom plans to try and rustle up some gasoline. He never wants to explore or see where we are. He wants to be near the boat, his dog, and his engines, and he seems content with this. It is a chilly morning as we leave him and Jerry and I head off to visit the river museum. Afterward we stop in the Bayou Cajun Restaurant for some takeout. While we’re waiting, we decide to have a beer. Though it’s only a little after noon, the bar is open and there’s a couple of regulars (you just know they are regulars) in jean jackets. One has no teeth. We take a pint of what’s on draft and I must admit, though it is the middle of the day, the cold beer tastes good.
There are various stuffed animals—a monkey crawling up a rope, a stuffed frog—and I compliment the bartender on her taste in stuffed animals. “Oh, these ain’t just stuffed animals,” the man with no teeth says, “show her Big Mouth Bill Bass.”
She takes down this fish, mounted on a piece of wood, winds something, and the bass starts to sing, “Take me to the river, drop me in the water,” its thick red lips flapping. When she sees I am laughing hysterically, she pulls a frog down and he sits in front of me, singing “It’s a Wonderful World” in an excellent Louis Armstrong rendition.
As we get back to the boat, Tom is happily pouring gasoline into the engines. “I got gas,” he says, clearly pleased with himself. “I got gas.” He tells us he was walking to find a gas station and a woman stopped him. She asked if he had a boat and was he looking for gasoline. He replied he was.
“It’s a disgrace we don’t have a gas dock in Paducah,” this woman said.
“She made two trips with me,” Tom tells us. “She even waited while I filled up, then took me back for more.” He pauses, shaking his head as he’s gassing up. “That’s the kind of people you want to meet on the river,” Tom says.
49
A FEW more miles up the Ohio and the river forks. We make our turn onto the Tennessee and I feel this trip is coming to an end for me. Perhaps it already ended when we left our little campsite on the Mississippi and turned onto the Ohio. I felt a spirit leave me then. This Tennessee River is wide and beautiful, but I have left something behind. For a time I had found home. Now I am once again on my way.
Tom agrees with me. As we sit on the flybridge, he says he wasn’t “a fan” of the Ohio. He wants his river back. I’m nodding as Samantha Jean gets out of her bomber jacket and stands, whining, at my feet. I decide to give it a try. “Okay, Sammy girl, big jump,” and she propels herself from the floor into my arms.
The dog nestles in my lap as Tom pilots straight ahead. I think he’s a bit stunned and perhaps a little jealous that his ornery dog has found her way onto my lap. As the sun starts to go down, a chill is in the air. It’s been our coldest day yet, anyway, but now with the sun dropping it’s just cold. Jerry won’t let me navigate here because we are traveling without maps in uncharted terrain, and I find myself growing colder and bored, even with Samantha Jean on my lap.
Even the landscape is altered. Here it is all flat. The reddish brown beaches of the delta. It is dusk as we near the Kentucky Dam. I am topside, catching the fading light, and I see right away that we’ve got two barges ahead of us, going downriver. That’s at least a two-hour wait. Quimby’s warned us of this. They said that this is the busiest lock on the river and long delays are possible.
This doesn’t seem to bother the boys, but I am anxious to be on our way. Jerry and Tom are gabbing back and forth and I can hear their guffaws, which I’ve grown weary of now. I am tired of the confines of this space. It’s cold and there’s nowhere to go. I sit on my yoga mat, wrapped in my moon and stars flannel blanket on the flybridge. Silver fish are jumping as the sun is setting on the Tennessee. On the shore a blue heron stalks them. After the sun goes down, it’s too cold to stay on top and I go below. I find Tom, sitting silently on the bow, staring at the lock. “It’s our last lock,” he says.
I nod. It’s true, it is. “I guess I don’t want this trip to end,” he says. He’s got Samantha Jean wrapped up in his jacket like a baby in a Snugli. Even in the dark I can see his eyes well up. “Do you want to talk about it?” I ask him.
“Naw,” he says. “Not now.” He gets up and leaves. A few minutes later I hear him topside, making his bed, and before I know it, he’s laughing with Jerry over something someone I’ve never met before said.
At 7:30 it’s pitch-black and there’s a tow named the Tennessee Hunter with a six-hundred-foot barge, filled with sand and gravel. We are moving into position ahead of it, but still waiting for another barge to clear. Tom wants to drop anchor, but Jerry says we’ll idle here. “Really?” Tom says.
“Yeah, I think so.”
The big black barge moves into place behind us. “We’ll get through after this tow. Tom, check the aft light over the transom. Make sure she’s on. Looks like the Tennessee Hunter’s just gonna hang back.”
The lockmaster comes on to our radio. “Friend Ship, hold back to port in case he has to reverse.” I’m watching Jerry hang back as we start to swing into the levee.
“Let’s try an anchor,” he says to Tom. “Which way’s the wind coming from?”
“Across the port bow,” Tom says.
“Okay, let’s throw an anchor over her port bow,” and Tom throws it. In the darkness we hear it splash.
“I’m gonna leave her running because we’re awfully close to shore.”
Tom seems nervous and I can tell he doesn’t like the look of this. “We’re getting some current here, Sir. It’s from the lock. She’s really kicking up bubbles and pushing us back. Shove your ass that way,” Tom says, pointing in the opposite direction we are drifting.
“I’m going to try and move us from the shore.” Jerry looks concerned as we are drifting closer and closer to the shore.
“Want me to pull the anchor?”
“If you can. Yeah, they must be draining the lock and the valves are pushing us into the shore.”
Jerry revs the engines and Tom tugs on the anchor line. “Okay, now we’re off the shore.”
“Just kick back.” Then more sharply to Tom, “Just kick back! Let me do this.” After he’s made his maneuver he looks sheepishly at Tom. “Sorry. I just wanted concentration.…”
“Rock ’n’ roll,” Tom says. “Hey, that Tennessee Hunter, he’s hanging way back.…”
It appears that Tennessee Hunter is going to perform the river courtesy of letting us go ahead of him. He could easily come in with us or exert his right-of-way as a commercial vessel, but he chooses to hang back and after a two-and-a-half-hour wait we proceed into Kentucky Lake. We enter a huge, dark pool of water, illumined with amber lights, where we will rise fifty-seven feet. The gates of the lock are an eerie golden color as suddenly the water begins to pour into the lock.
We find ourselves on a roiling sea. The water, the color of pea sou
p, literally swirls beneath us, boiling up. It is the kind of water where you know if you fell in, you’d be sucked down, and we all quickly put on our life jackets and Tom hurls Samantha Jean into the cabin. We churn in this cauldron from hell, a pit from which it seems we will be pulled down. We rise higher and higher in this bubbling broth until suddenly the churning stops. Everything is calm as if nothing was ever wrong. The yellow gates open and the siren blares. We sail into the blackened night.
We are looking for the Kentucky Dam Marina. But we have come onto a huge lake in the darkest of nights. Across the lake we see lights, but they are far away. Closer to where we are there is an inlet and more lights. “Well,” Jerry says, “which way should we go?”
Across the lake looks very far in this darkness so we opt for the closer inlet. It is close to midnight as our River Queen floats into a marina, filled with hundreds of sailboats. Tom and Jerry shake their heads. It’s the wrong place, but we’re all too tired and cold to go anywhere else now. We find a slip at the dock and tie up. Tom hands me the bowline. “You do it,” he says. “I’ll take the stern.”
I’m exhausted and shivering, holding the line in my hand. I wrap it a few times around the cleat, then try to remember “the rabbit.” Down, out, around, in. I do it once and it doesn’t seem right. Angling myself for better light, I try again. Tom comes by as I finish and yanks the line. “That’ll hold,” he says, adjusting the fenders. It is a cold clear night with just a crescent moon. The sails around us clang into their masts like hundreds of wind chimes.
50
AT SIX in the morning there’s frost on the glass. The cabin is freezing cold, except right in front of the space heater Jerry’s dug up from the hold, which smells of gas. I huddle down inside my sleeping bag. But Jerry’s stirring about, putting on water for our tea bag coffee, so I get up. Outside I hear the clanging as wind blows through sails. I gaze out and see the dozens and dozens of boats, their sails flapping in the wind. It is clear we are at the wrong marina. We need fuel and a pump out. I haven’t had a shower, a real shower, in six days. I don’t mean hot water either. I just mean relatively clean water that comes from above and falls over my head.
No matter what, we need to find the Kentucky Dam Marina, which is probably across the lake. I’m so cold I put on all my heavy clothes, which isn’t a lot. There’s a lighthouse on a spit of land and I walk there. I take my binoculars to see if I can see the marina. The sunshine feels warm, but I can almost see my breath.
On the dock, lines are coiled in an orderly fashion like garden snakes. The sailboats have such earnest names, like Relentless, Persistence, Tranquillity. There’s nothing fun or playful here. No Ms. Chief, Mint-to-Be, or Naughty Buoys at this marina. I go out through the gate and head along the short trail to the lighthouse. With my binoculars I spot what looks like a marina far across the blue stretch of lake. The wind is blowing and I’m shivering as I head back and find that someone has shut the gate and I’m locked out.
I start to shout for Jerry, but it’s not even seven in the morning and I’m sure people are asleep on their boats. I call him on his phone, but he doesn’t answer. I wait a few moments for someone to come. At last Jerry answers and comes and gets me. When I return to the boat, Tom is sitting on the bow, eating a pepperoni pizza. He has another one cooking in the oven. He’s on his third can of diet Dew. “Breakfast,” he says. “Missed dinner last night.”
There’s something about the smell of pepperoni pizza at seven a.m. that doesn’t sit well with me. Still, I help myself to a slice.
“I have an idea,” I say. “While you guys gas up and pump out at Kentucky Dam, I’ll take a shower.”
“I have an idea,” Tom says. “Why don’t we all wait and take showers at Paris Landing?”
“Because I want a shower now.”
“Well, I say we all take showers at the same time.”
We huff and I walk away. Tom does too and for the next half hour we don’t speak. We are preparing to leave, untying our lines. As we are about to push off, Tom turns to me. “I guess I was kinda testy.”
“No, I was being selfish,” I tell him.
“I just don’t want this trip to end,” he tells me.
“I don’t either.” Then we finish up with our chores.
* * *
An hour later we are riding across Kentucky Lake to the marina where we will pump out and gas up. We will also all take showers. The sun starts to warm up the day and we aren’t in a rush. I meet a man who tells me he’s sailing around the world.
“Sailing?” I ask him.
“Yes, in a sailboat.” He’s a short, stocky, gray-haired man with a mustache, and he doesn’t exactly look like a sailor.
“How long are you going to spend?”
“Four years.”
I am stunned. “Four years.” He starts to tell me his route. Down the Mississippi to Florida, Florida across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, the Mediterranean to Africa. Around the tip of Africa. I am completely amazed and now my little journey feels paltry in comparison. “Can I see your boat?”
“Sure,” he says.
As we’re walking over, I ask if he’s going alone. “Oh, no, my wife and our daughter are coming with.”
I find it incredible that a daughter would want to spend four years sailing with her parents. “It’s nice that your daughter wants to come with.”
“Oh, she doesn’t have much choice.”
“She doesn’t?”
“No, she’s fifteen.”
Now I am really stunned. I can’t imagine taking my daughter out of high school. And when I see their boat—a rather small, black sailboat with no real deck topside—I truly can’t believe it. The wife and daughter come out of the hull to greet me. The wife is a large, blond woman and their daughter has a weak handshake and dark eyes.
“We’re homeschooling her. She’s doing the ACE program,” her father explains when they’ve gone back below.
“ACE?”
“Accelerated Christian Education.”
“Really…” I’m trying to imagine what this would be like—to be homeschooled with your Christian education, or any education for that matter, by your parents in the hull of a boat as you sail across the Atlantic. I would never get my daughter on board. As I head back to our boat, I feel sorry for that girl. I still feel her limp hand in mine and sometimes at night I think of her, drifting at sea.
I think of our empty house. Our daughter gone. I recall a night when she was a little girl. I was tucking her in. Like my father I always read to Kate and sang her a song. As I was turning off the light, she said, “I love you more than anything, Mommy.”
“And why is that?” I asked her.
Without hesitating, she replied, “Because you let me be what I want to be.”
I closed her door behind me and breathed a deep sigh. This is what I wanted for her. When I get home from this journey, the house will not be filled with her blaring music and mess, her night owl hours and raucous laughter. But I know she’ll be back—in whatever form that might be.
* * *
In the late afternoon we set out across Kentucky Lake. It is a beautiful, warm, sunny day now and the lake is big and wide. Though we still have no maps, Jerry doesn’t mind letting me pilot. At the Blood River I take the helm. With my binoculars I navigate the red and green buoys. As we are going upstream on the Tennessee, it’s red buoys right. Tom and I are stunned by the beauty. “We had to come through the gates of hell to get to this paradise,” he says.
We’re at Mile 61.4 and our journey ends just a few miles ahead. I want to slow it down, but Tom, who stands beside me, gazing out across the river, says, “We’ve got issues.”
“We do…?”
He lists them for me. “We’ve got an oil leak, a crack in the manifold. The carburetor’s gotta come out. I’m not sure how long the fuel pump’s gonna hold.” Tom leans back, puts his feet up. “You know what I’m going to do when I get home? I’m going to sit back and put my feet u
p and rewind.”
I smile at Tom. “That’s a great idea. I think I need to rewind too.”
“Yeah,” Tom says, smiling as he gazes upriver. “We all do.” As I steer between buoys, he starts to muse. “I guess you’ve seen it all on this trip, haven’t you, Mary? You’ve seen hooters and shakers. You’ve been in tornadoes and hurricanes and lightning storms and bugs. You’ve bivouacked on beaches and swam in the river’s mud. You’ve met sorcerers and sea captains, river rats and gypsies. You’ve seen its tired towns and you’ve been in God’s Country. What more could you ask for?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know, Tom. I really don’t know.” We ride in silence for a few moments. Then he says, “You okay if I go below?”
He has never asked to go below before when I’m at the helm. I look at the wide Kentucky Lake. There’s nothing ahead; nothing behind. Just open river. I tell him I’m fine. “Sure, go ahead.” And with that Tom leaves me. When he gets below, Jerry must realize I’m at the wheel, but he doesn’t take her below. I’m alone at the helm for the first time. No one’s with me, no one telling me what to do. Only Samantha Jean is topside, asleep in her black bomber jacket, dreaming in the sun. What was it Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean says about a boat? That it’s not just a rudder and keel and a hull. “What a ship is, what a ship really is, is freedom.”
“The moon belongs to everyone,” my father used to croon, his head tilted back, “the best things in life are free.” His hands glide up and down the keys. “And love can come to anyone.” I hear his voice, slightly cracking, a little off-key. He plays a stride with his left hand, keeping the melody with his right. His foot on the pedal as he holds the beat.
I need to find a way to put his bones to rest. My brother still talks of scattering them at the Sportsman’s Country Club golf course in suburban Illinois. I’m torn between downtown Chicago and Prospect Park in Brooklyn where I live. But my father doesn’t know anyone in Brooklyn besides me, I tell myself. He always wanted to be free. I understand this. On some level he wanted none of the encumbrances. I want my own kind of freedom as well.
