Show Boat

by Edna Ferber

  Sometimes they were in mid-river when the breakfast bell sounded; sometimes tied to a landing. The view might be plantation, woods, or small town—it was all one to the Cotton Blossom company, intent on coffee and bacon. Long before white-aproned Jo, breakfast bell in hand, emerged head first from the little doorway beneath the stage back of the orchestra pit, like an amiable black python from its lair, Mrs. Hawks was on the scene, squinting critically into cream jugs, attacking flies as though they were dragons, infuriating Queenie with the remark that the biscuits seemed soggy this morning. Five minutes after the bell was brandished, Jo had placed the breakfast on the table, hot: oatmeal, steaming pots of coffee, platters of fried eggs with ham or bacon, stacks of toast, biscuits fresh from the oven. If you were prompt you got a hot breakfast; tardy, you took it cold.

  Parthy, whose breakfast cap, designed to hide her curl papers, always gave the effect, somehow, of a martial helmet, invariably was first at the small table that stood at the head of the room farthest from the little doorway. So she must have sat at her school-house desk during those New England winters, awaiting the tardy morning arrival of reluctant and chilblained urchins. Magnolia was one of those children whom breakfast does not interest. Left to her own devices, she would have ignored the meal altogether. She usually entered late, her black hair still wet from the comb, her eyes wide with her eagerness to impart the day’s first bit of nautical news.

  “Doc says there’s a family going down river on a bumboat, and they’ve got a teensy baby no bigger than

  “Drink your milk.”

  “—doll and he says it must have been born on the boat and he bets it’s not more than a week old. Oh, I hope they’ll tie up somewhere near——”

  “Eat your toast with your egg.”

  “Do I have to eat my egg?”

  “Yes.”

  If Magnolia was late, Andy was always later. He ate quickly and abstractedly. As he swallowed his coffee you could almost see his agile mind darting here and there, so that you wondered how his electric little body resisted following it as a lesser force follows a greater—up into the pilot house, down in the engine room, into the town, leaping ahead to the next landing; dickering with storekeepers for supplies. He was always the first to finish and was off at a quick trot, clawing the mutton-chop whiskers as he went.

  Early or late, Julie and Steve came in together, Steve’s great height ludicrously bent to avoid the low rafters of the dining room. Julie and Steve were the character team—Julie usually cast as adventuress, older sister, foil for Elly, the ingénue. Julie was a natural and intuitive actress, probably the best in the company. Sometimes she watched Elly’s unintelligent work, heard her slovenly speech and her silly inflections, and a little contemptuous look would come into her face.

  Steve played villains and could never have kept the job, even in that uncritical group, had it not been for Julie. He was very big and very fair, and almost entirely lacking in dramatic sense. A quiet gentle giant, he always seemed almost grotesquely miscast, his blondeur and his trusting faithful blue eyes belying the sable hirsuteness of villainy. Julie coached him patiently, tirelessly. The result was fairly satisfactory. But a nuance, an inflection, was beyond him.

  “Who has a better right!” his line would be, perhaps. Schultzy, directing at rehearsal, would endeavour fruitlessly to convey to him its correct reading. After rehearsal, Julie could be heard going over the line again and again.

  “Who has a better right! “Steve would thunder, dramatically.

  “No, dear. The accent is on ‘better.’ Like this: ‘Who has a better right!’ ”

  Steve’s blue eyes would be very earnest, his face red with effort. “Oh, I see. Come down hard on ‘better,’ huh? ‘Who has a better right!’ ”

  It was useless.

  The two were very much in love. The others in the company sometimes teased them about this, but not often. Julie and Steve did not respond to this badinage gracefully. There existed between the two a relation that made the outsider almost uncomfortable. When they looked at each other, there vibrated between them a current that sent a little shiver through the beholder. Julie’s eyes were deep-set and really black, and there was about them a curious indefinable quality. Magnolia liked to look into their soft and mournful depths. Her own eyes were dark, but not like Julie’s. Perhaps it was the whites of Julie’s eyes that were different.

  Magnolia had once seen them kiss. She had come upon them quietly and unexpectedly, on deck, in the dusk. Certainly she had never witnessed a like passage of love between her parents; and even her recent familiarity with stage romance had not prepared her for it. It was long before the day of the motion picture fade-out. Olga Nethersole’s famous osculation was yet to shock a Puritan America. Steve had held Julie a long long minute, wordlessly. Her slimness had seemed to melt into him. Julie’s eyes were closed. She was quite limp as he tipped her upright. She stood thus a moment, swaying, her eyes still shut. When she opened them they were clouded, misty, as were his. The two then beheld a staring and fascinated little girl quite palpably unable to move from the spot. Julie had laughed a little low laugh. She had not flushed, exactly. Her sallow colouring had taken on a tone at once deeper and clearer and brighter, like amber underlaid with gold. Her eyes had widened until they were enormous in her thin dark glowing face. It was as though a lamp had been lighted somewhere behind them.

  “What makes you look like that?” Magnolia had demanded, being a forthright young person.

  “Like what?” Julie had asked.

  “Like you do. All—all shiny.”

  “Love,” Julie had answered, quite simply. Magnolia had not in the least understood; but she remembered. And years later she did understand.

  Besides Elly, the ingénue, Schultzy, juvenile lead, Julie and Steve, character team, there were Mr. and Mrs. Means, general business team, Frank, the heavy, and Ralph, general utility man. Elly and Schultzy sat at table with the Hawkses, the mark of favour customary to their lofty theatrical eminence. The others of the company, together with Doc, and three of the band members, sat at the long table in the centre of the room. Mrs. Means played haughty dowagers, old Kentucky crones, widows, mothers, and middle-aged females. Mr. Means did bankers, Scrooges, old hunters and trappers, comics, and the like.

  At the table nearest the door and the kitchen sat the captain and crew of the Mollie Able. There were no morning newspapers to read between sips of coffee; no mail to open. They were all men and women of experience. They had knocked about the world. In their faces was a lived look, together with an expression that had in it a curiously child-like quality. Captain Andy was not far wrong in his boast that they were like one big family—a close and jealous family needing no outside stimulus for its amusement. They were extraordinarily able to amuse themselves. Their talk was racy, piquant, pungent. The women were, for the most part, made of sterner stuff than the men—that is, among the actors. That the men had chosen this drifting, carefree, protected life, and were satisfied with it, proved that. Certainly Julie was a force stronger than Steve; Elly made a slave of Schultzy; Mrs. Means was a sternly maternal wife to her weak-chested and drily humorous little husband.

  Usually they lingered over their coffee. Jo, padding in from the kitchen, would bring on a hot potful.

  Julie had a marmoset which she had come by in NewOrleans, where it had been brought from equatorial waters by some swarthy earringed sailor. This she frequently carried to the table with her, tucked under her arm, its tiny dark head with the tragic mask of a face peering out from beneath her elbow. To Mrs. Hawks’ intense disgust, Julie fed the tiny creature out of her own dish. In her cabin its bed was an old sealskin muff from whose depths its mournful dark eyes looked appealingly out from a face that was like nothing so much as that of an old old baby.

  “I declare,” Parthy would protest, almost daily, “it fairly turns a body’s stomach to see her eating out of the same dish with that dirty little rat.”

  “Why, Mama! it isn’t
a rat any such thing! It’s a monkey and you know it. Julie says maybe Schultzy can get one for me in New Orleans if I promise to be very very careful of it.”

  “I’d like to see her try,” grimly putting an end to that dream.

  The women took care of their own cabins. The detail of this occupied them until mid-morning. Often there was a rehearsal at ten that lasted an hour or more. Schultzy announced it at breakfast.

  As they swept up a river, or floated down, their approach to the town was announced by the shrill iron-throated calliope, pride of Captain Andy’s heart. Its blatant voice heralded the coming of the show boat long before the boat itself could be seen from the river bank. It had solid brass keys and could plainly be heard for five miles. George, who played the calliope, was also the pianist. He was known, like all calliope players, as the Whistler. Magnolia delighted in watching him at the instrument. He wore a slicker and a slicker hat and heavy gloves to protect his hands, for the steam of the whistles turned to hot raindrops and showered his hands and his head and shoulders as he played. As they neared the landing, the band, perched atop the show boat, forward, alternated with the calliope. From the town, hurrying down the streets, through the woods, dotting the levee and the landing, came eager figures, black and white. Almost invariably some magic-footed Negro, overcome by the music, could be seen on the wharf executing the complicated and rhythmic steps of a double shuffle, his rags flapping grotesquely about him, his mouth a gash of white. By nine o’clock in the morning every human being within a radius of five miles knew that the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre had docked at the waterfront.

  By half-past eleven the band, augmented by two or three men of the company who doubled in brass, must be ready for the morning concert on the main street corner. Often, queerly enough, the town at which they made their landing was no longer there. The Mississippi, in prankish mood, had dumped millions of tons of silt in front of the street that faced the river. Year by year, perhaps, this had gone on, until now that which had been a river town was an inland town, with a mile of woodland and sandy road between its main street and the waterfront. The old serpent now stretched its sluggish yellow coils in another channel.

  By eleven o’clock the band would have donned its scarlet coats with the magnificent gold braid and brass buttons. The nether part of these costumes always irritated Magnolia. Her colour-loving eye turned away from them, offended. For while the upper costume was splendidly martial, the lower part was composed merely of such everyday pants as the band members might be wearing at the time of the concert hour, and were a rude shock to the ravished eye as it travelled from the gay flame and gold of the jacket and the dashing impudence of the cap. Especially in the drum major did this offend her. He was called the baton spinner and wore, instead of the scarlet cap of the other band members, an imposing (though a slightly mangy) fur shako, very black and shaggy and fierce-looking, and with a strap under the chin. Pete, the bass drummer, worked in the engine room. Usually, at the last minute, he washed up hastily, grabbed his drum, buttoned on his coat, and was dazzlingly transformed from a sooty crow into a scarlet tanager.

  Up the levee they scrambled—two cornets, a clarinet, a tuba, an alto (called a peck horn. Magnolia loved its ump-a ump-a ta-ta-ta-ta, ump-a ump-a ta-ta-ta-ta), a snare drummer who was always called a “sticks,” and the bass drum, known as the bull.

  When the landing was a waterfront town, the band concert was a pleasant enough interval in the day’s light duties. But when a mile or more of dusty road lay between the show boat and the main street it became a real chore. Carrying their heavy instruments, their scarlet coats open, their caps in their hands, they would trudge, tired, hot, and sweating, the long dusty road that led through the woods. When the road became a clearing and they emerged abruptly into the town, they would button their coats, mop their hot faces, adjust cap or shako, stiffen their drooping shoulders. Their gait would change from one of plodding weariness to a sprightly strut. Their pepper-and-salt, or brown, or black trousered legs would move with rhythmic precision in time to the music. From tired, sticky, wilted plodders, they would be transformed into heroic and romantic figures. Up came the chest of the baton spinner. His left hand rested elegantly on his hip, his head and shoulders were held stiffly, arrogantly; his right hand twirled the glittering baton until it dazzled the eyes like a second noonday sun. Hotel waitresses, their hearts beating high, scurried to the windows: children rushed pell-mell from the school yard into the street; clerks in their black sateen aprons and straw sleevelets stood in the shop doorways; housewives left their pots a-boil as they lingered a wistful moment on the front porch, shading their eyes with a work-seamed hand; loafers spilled out of the saloons and stood agape and blinking. And as the music blared and soared, the lethargic little town was transformed for an hour into a gay and lively scene. Even the old white fly-bitten nags in the streets stepped with a jerky liveliness in their spring-halted gait, and a gleam came into their lacklustre eyes as they pricked up their ears to the sound. Seeking out the busiest corner of the dull little main street, the band would take their stand, bleating and blaring, the sun playing magnificently on the polished brass of their instruments.

  Although he never started with them, at this point Captain Andy always turned up, having overtaken them in some mysterious way. Perhaps he swung from tree to tree through the woods. There he was in his blue coat, his wrinkled baggy linen pants, his white canvas cap with the leather visor; fussy, nervous, animated, bright-eyed, clawing the mutton-chop whiskers from side to side. Under his arm he carried a sheaf of playbills announcing the programmes and extolling the talents of the players. After the band had played two lively numbers, he would make his speech, couched in the absurd grandiloquence of the showman. He talked well. He made his audience laugh, bizarre yet strangely appealing little figure that he was. “Most magnificent company of players every assembled on the rivers … unrivalled scenery and costumes … Miss Lenore La Verne … dazzling array of talent … fresh from triumphs in the East … concert after the show … singing and dancing … bring the children … come one, come all.… Cotton Blossom troupe just one big happy family.…”

  The band would strike up again. Captain Andy would whisk through the crowd with uncanny swiftness distributing his playbills, greeting an acquaintance met on previous trips, chucking a child under the chin, extolling the brilliance and gaiety of the performance scheduled for that evening. At the end of a half hour the band would turn and march playing down the street. In the dispersing crowd could be discerned Andy’s agile little figure darting, stooping, swooping as he thriftily collected again the playbills that, once perused, had been dropped in the dust by careless spectators.

  Dinner was at four, a hearty meal. Before dinner, and after, the Cotton Blossom troupe was free to spend its time as it would. The women read or sewed. There were always new costumes to be contrived, or old ones to mend and refurbish. The black-hearted adventuress of that morning’s rehearsal sat neatly darning a pair of her husband’s socks. There was always the nearby town to visit; a spool of thread to be purchased, a stamp, a sack of peppermint drops, a bit of muslin, a toothbrush. The indolence of the life was such that they rarely took any premeditated exercise. Sometimes they strolled in the woods at springtime when the first tender yellow-green hazed the forest vistas. They fished, though the catch was usually catfish. On hot days the more adventuresome of them swam. The river was their front yard, grown as accustomed as a stretch of lawn. They were extraordinarily able to amuse themselves. Hardly one that did not play piano, violin, flute, banjo, mandolin.

  By six o’clock a stir—a little electric unrest—an undercurrent of excitement could be sensed aboard the show boat. They came sauntering back from the woods, the town, the levee. They drifted down the aisles and in and out of their dressing rooms. Years of trouping failed to still in them the quickened pulse that always came with the approach of the evening’s performance.

  Down in the orchestra pit the band was tu
ning up. They would play atop the show boat on the forward deck before the show, alternating with the calliope, as in the morning. The daytime lethargy had vanished. On the stage the men of the company were setting the scene. Hoarse shouts. Lift ’er up there! No—down a little. H’ist her up. Back! Closer! Dressing-room doors opened and shut. Calls from one room to another. Twilight came on. Doc began to light the auditorium kerosene lamps whose metal reflectors sent back their yellow glow. Outside the kerosene searchlight, cunningly rigged on top of the Mollie Abie’s pilot house, threw its broad beam up the river bank to the levee.