Show Boat

by Edna Ferber

  Dwellers in this or that river town loitering down at the landing to see what manner of sin and loose living went on in and about this show boat with its painted women and play-acting men would be startled to hear sounds and sniff smells which were identical with those which might be issuing that very moment from their own smug and godly dwellings ashore. From out the open doors of the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre came the unmistakable and humdrum sounds of scales and five-finger exercises done painfully and unwillingly by rebellious childish hands. Ta-ta-ta—TA—ta-ta-ta. From below decks there floated up the mouth-watering savour of tomato ketchup, of boiling vinegar and spices, or the perfumed aroma of luscious fruits seething in sugary kettles.

  “Smells for all the world like somebody was doing up sweet pickles.” One village matron to another.

  “Well, I suppose they got to eat like other folks.”

  Ta-ta-ta—TA—ta-ta-ta.

  It was inevitable, however, that the ease and indolence of the life, as well as the daily contact with odd and unconventional characters must leave some imprint on even so adamantine an exterior as Parthy’s. Little by little her school-teacherly diction dropped from her. Slowly her vowels began to slur, her aren’ts became ain’ts, her crisp new England utterance took on something of the slovenly Southern drawl, her consonants were missing from the end of a word here and there. True, she still bustled and nagged, managed and scolded, drove and reproached. She still had the power to make Andy jump with nervousness. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the influence of this virago was more definitely felt than that of any other one of the Cotton Blossom’s company and crew. Of these only Julie Dozier, and Windy, the pilot (so called because he almost never talked) actually triumphed over Mrs. Hawks. Julie’s was a negative victory. She never voluntarily spoke to Parthy and had the power to aggravate that lady to the point of frenzy by remaining limp, supine, and idle when Parthy thought she should be most active; by raising her right eyebrow quizzically in response to a more than usually energetic tirade; by the habitual disorder of the tiny room which she shared with Steve; by the flagrant carelessness and untidiness of her own gaunt graceful person.

  “I declare, Hawks, what you keep that slatternly yellow cat around this boat for beats me.”

  “Best actress in the whole caboodle, that’s why.” Something fine in little Captain Andy had seen and recognized the flame that might have glorified Julie had it not instead consumed her. “That girl had the right backing she’d make her mark, and not in any show boat, either. I’ve been to New York. I’ve seen ’em down at Wallack’s and Daly’s and around.”

  “A slut, that’s what she is. I had my way she’d leave this boat bag and baggage.”

  “Well, this is one time you won’t have your way, Mrs. Hawks, ma’am.” She had not yet killed the spirit in Andy.

  “Mark my words, you’ll live to regret it. The way she looks out of those black eyes of hers! Gives me the creeps.”

  “What would you have the girl look out of,” retorted Andy, not very brilliantly. “Her ears?”

  Julie could not but know of this antagonism toward her. Some perverse streak in her otherwise rich and gentle make-up caused her to find a sinister pleasure in arousing it.

  Windy’s victory was more definitely dramatic, though his defensive method against Parthy’s attacks resembled in sardonic quiet and poise Julie’s own. Windy was accounted one of the most expert pilots on the Mississippi. He knew every coil and sinew and stripe of the yellow serpent. River men used his name as a synonym for magic with the pilot’s wheel. Starless night or misty day; shoal water or deep, it was all one to Windy. Though Andy’s senior by more than fifteen years, the two had been friends for twenty. Captain Andy had enormous respect for his steersmanship; was impressed by his taciturnity (being himself so talkative and vivacious); enjoyed talking with him in the bright quiet security of the pilot house. He was absolute czar of the Mollie Able and the Cotton Blossom, as befitted his high accomplishments. No one ever dreamed of opposing him except Parthy. He was slovenly of person, careless of habit. These shortcomings Parthy undertook to correct early in her show-boat career. She met with defeat so prompt, so complete, so crushing as to cause her for ever after to leave him unmolested.

  Windy had muddy boots. They were, it seemed, congenitally so. He would go ashore in mid-afternoon of a hot August day when farmers for miles around had been praying for rain these weeks past and return in a downpour with half the muck and clay of the countryside clinging to his number eleven black square-toed elastic-side boots. A tall, emaciated drooping old man, Windy; with long gnarled muscular hands whose enlarged knuckles and leathery palms were the result of almost half a century at the wheel. His pants were always grease-stained; his black string tie and gray shirt spattered with tobacco juice; his brown jersey frayed and ragged. Across his front he wore a fine anchor watch chain, or “log” chain, as it was called. And gleaming behind the long flowing tobacco-splotched gray beard that reached almost to his waist could be glimpsed a milkily pink pearl stud like a star behind a dirty cloud-bank. The jewel had been come by, doubtless, in payment of some waterfront saloon gambling debt. Surely its exquisite curves had once glowed upon fine and perfumed linen.

  It was against this taciturn and omnipotent conquerer of the rivers that Parthy raised the flag of battle.

  “Traipsin’ up and down this boat and the Mollie Able, spitting his filthy tobacco and leaving mud tracks like an elephant that’s been in a bog. If I’ve had those steps leading up to the pilot house scrubbed once, I’ve had ’em scrubbed ten times this week, and now look at them! I won’t have it, and so I tell you. Why can’t he go up the side of the boat the way a pilot is supposed to do! What’s that side ladder for, I’d like to know! He’s supposed to go up it; not the steps.”

  “Now, Parthy, you can’t run a boat the way you would a kitchen back in Thebes. Windy’s no hired man. He’s the best pilot on the rivers, and I’m lucky to have him. A hundred jobs better than this ready to jump at him if he so much as crooks a finger. He’s pulled this tub through good many tight places where any other pilot’d landed us high and dry on a sand bar. And don’t you forget it.”

  “He’s a dirty old man. And I won’t have it. Muddying up my clean …”

  Parthy was not one of your scolds who takes her grievances out in mere words. With her, to threaten was to act. That very morning, just before the Cotton Blossom was making a late departure from Greenville, where they had played the night before, to Sunnisie Side Landing, twelve miles below, this formidable woman, armed with hammer and nails, took advantage of Windy’s temporary absence below decks to nail down the hatch above the steps leading to the pilot house. She was the kind of woman who can drive a nail straight. She drove ten of them, long and firm and deep. A pity that no one saw her. It was a sight worth seeing, this accomplished and indomitable virago in curl papers, driving nails with a sure and steady stroke.

  Below stairs Windy, coming aboard from an early morning look around, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, sank his great yellow fangs into a generous wedge of Honest Scrap, and prepared to climb the stairs to the Cotton Blossom pilot house, there to manipulate wheel and cord that would convey his orders to Pete in the engine room.

  Up the stairs, leaving a mud spoor behind. One hand raised to lift the hatch; wondering, meanwhile, to find it closed. A mighty heave; a pounding with the great fist; another heave, then, with the powerful old shoulder.

  “Nailed,” said Windy aloud to himself, mildly. Then, still mildly, “The old hell cat.” He spat, then, on the hatchway steps and clumped leisurely down again. He leaned over the boat rail, looking benignly down at the crowd of idlers gathered at the wharf to watch the show boat cast off. Then he crossed the deck again to where a capacious and carpet-seated easy chair held out its inviting arms. Into this he sank with a grunt of relaxation. From his pocket he took the pipe so recently relinquished, filled it, tamped it, lighted it. From another pocket he took a month-old
copy of the New Orleans Times-Democrat, turned to the column marked Shipping News, and settled down, apparently, for a long quiet day with literature.

  Up came the anchor. In came the hawser. Chains clanked. The sound of the gangplank drawn up. The hoarse shouts from land and water that always attend the departure of a river boat. “Throw her over there! Lift ’er! Heh, Pete! Gimme hand here! Little to the left. Other side! Hold on! Easy!”

  The faces of the crowd ashore turned expectantly toward the boat. Everything shipshape. Pete in the engine room. Captain Andy scampering for the texas. Silence. No bells. No steam. No hoarse shouts of command. God A’mighty, where’s Windy? Windy! Windy!

  Windy lowers his shielding newspaper and mildly regards the capering captain and bewildered crew and startled company. He is wearing his silver-rimmed reading spectacles slightly askew on his biblical-looking hooked nose. Andy rushes up to him, all the Basque in him bubbling. “God’s sake, Windy, what’s … why don’t you take her! We’re going.”

  Windy chewed rhythmically for a moment, spat a long brown jet of juice, wiped his hairy mouth with the back of one gnarled hand. “We ain’t going, Cap’n Hawks, because she can’t go till I give her the go-ahead. And I ain’t give her the go-ahead. I’m the pilot of this here boat.”

  “But why? What the … Wh——”

  “The hatch is nailed down above the steps leading to the pilot house, Cap’n Andy. Till that hatchway’s open, I don’t climb up to no pilot house. And till I climb up to the pilot house, she don’t get no go-ahead. And till I give her the go-ahead, she don’t go, not if we stay here alongside this landing till the Cotton Blossom rots.”

  He looked around benignly and resumed his reading of the New Orleans Times-Democrat.

  Profanity, frowned upon under Parthy’s regime, now welled up in Andy and burst from him in spangled geysers. Words seethed to the surface and exploded like fireworks. Twenty-five years of river life had equipped him with a vocabulary rich, varied, purple. He neglected neither the heavens above nor the earth beneath. Revolt and rage shook his wiry little frame. Years of henpecking, years of natural gaiety suppressed, years of mincing when he wished to stride, years of silence when he wished to sing, now were wiped away by the stream of undiluted rage that burst from Captain Andy Hawks. It was a torrent, a flood, a Mississippi of profanity in which hells and damns were mere drops in the mighty roaring mass.

  “Out with your crowbars there. Pry up that hatch! I’m captain of this boat, by God, and anybody, man or woman, who nails down that hatch again without my orders gets put off this boat wherever we are, and so I say.”

  Did Parthenia Ann Hawks shrink and cower and pale under the blinding glare of this pyrotechnic profanity? Not that indomitable woman. The picture of outraged virtue in curl papers, she stood her ground like a Roman matron. She had even, when the flood broke, sent Magnolia indoors with a gesture meant to convey protection from the pollution of this verbal stream.

  “Well, Captain Hawks, a fine example you have set for your company and crew I must say.”

  “You must say! You——! Let me tell you, Mrs. Hawks, ma’am, the less you say the better. And I repeat, anybody touches that hatchway again——”

  “Touch it!” echoed Parthy in icy disdain. “I wouldn’t touch it, nor the pilot house, nor the pilot either, if you’ll excuse my saying so, with a ten-foot pole.”

  And swept away with as much dignity as a Cotton Blossom early morning costume would permit. Her head bloody but unbowed.

  VII

  JULIE was gone. Steve was gone. Tragedy had stalked into Magnolia’s life; had cast its sable mantle over the Cotton Blossom. Pete had kept his promise and revenge had been his. But the taste of triumph had not, after all, been sweet in his mouth. There was little of the peace of satisfaction in his sooty face stuck out of the engine-room door. The arm that beat the bull drum in the band was now a listless member, so that a hollow mournful thump issued from that which should have given forth a rousing boom.

  The day the Cotton Blossom was due to play Lemoyne, Mississippi, Julie Dozier took sick. In show-boat troupes, as well as in every other theatrical company in the world, it is an unwritten law that an actor must never be too sick to play. He may be sick. Before the performance he may be too sick to stand; immediately after the performance he may collapse. He may, if necessary, die on the stage and the curtain will then be lowered. But no real trouper while conscious will ever confess himself too sick to go on when the overture ends and the lights go down.

  Julie knew this. She had played show boats for years, up and down the rivers of the Middle West and the South. She had a large and loyal following. Lemoyne was a good town, situated on the river, prosperous, sizable.

  Julie lay on her bed in her darkened room, refusing all offers of aid. She did not want food. She did not want cold compresses on her head. She did not want hot compresses on her head. She wanted to be left alone—with Steve. Together the two stayed in the darkened room, and when some member of the company came to the door with offers of aid or comfort, there came into their faces a look that was strangely like one of fear, followed immediately by a look of relief.

  Queenie sent Jo to the door with soup, her panacea for all ailments, whether of the flesh or the spirit. Julie made a show of eating it, but when Jo had clumped across the stage and down to his kitchen Julie motioned to Steve. He threw the contents of the bowl out of the window into the yellow waters of the Mississippi.

  Doc appeared at Julie’s door for the tenth time though it was only mid-morning. “Think you can play all right, to-night, though, don’t you, Julie?”

  In the semi-darkness of her shaded room Julie’s eyes glowed suddenly wide and luminous. She sat up in bed, pushing her hair back from her forehead with a gesture so wild as to startle the old trouper.

  “No!” she cried, in a sort of terror. “No! I can’t play to-night. Don’t ask me.”

  Blank astonishment made Doc’s face almost ludicrous. For an actress to announce ten hours before the time set for the curtain’s rising that she would not be able to go on that evening—an actress who had not suffered decapitation or an amputation—was a thing unheard of in Doc’s experience.

  “God a’mighty, Julie! If you’re sick as all that, you’d better see a doctor. Steve, what say?”

  The great blond giant seated at the side of Julie’s bed did not look round at his questioner. His eyes were on Julie’s face. “Julie’s funny that way. She’s set against doctors. Won’t have one, that’s all. Don’t coax her. It’ll only make her worse.”

  Inured as he was to the vagaries of woman, this apparently was too much for Doc. Schultzy appeared in the doorway; peered into the dimness of the little room.

  “Funny thing. I guess you must have an admirer in this town, Jule. Somebody’s stole your picture, frame and all, out of the layout in the lobby there. First I thought it might be that crazy Pete, used to be so stuck on you.… Now, now, Steve! Keep your shirt on! Keep your shirt on!… I asked him, straight, but he was surprised all right. He ain’t good enough actor to fool me. He didn’t do it. Must be some town rube all right, Julie, got stuck on your shape or something. I put up another one.” He stood a moment, thoughtfully. Elly came up behind him, hatted and gloved.

  “I’m going up to town, Julie. Can I fetch you something? An orange, maybe? Or something from the drug store?”

  Julie’s head on the pillow moved a negative. “She says no, thanks,” Steve answered for her, shortly. It was as though both laboured under a strain. The three in the doorway sensed it. Elly shrugged her shoulders, though whether from pique or indifference it was hard to say. Doc still stood puzzled, bewildered. Schultzy half turned away. “S’long’s you’re all right by to-night,” he said cheerfully.

  “Says she won’t be,” Doc put in, lowering his voice.

  “Won’t be!” repeated Schultzy, almost shrilly. “Why, she ain’t sick, is she! I mean, sick!”

  Schultzy sent his voice shrilling from Julie�
�s Kttle bedroom doorway across the bare stage, up the aisles of the empty auditorium, so that it penetrated the box office at the far end of the boat, where Andy, at the ticket window, was just about to be relieved by Parthy.

  “Heh, Cap! Cap! Come here. Julie’s sick. Julie’s too sick to go on. Says she’s too sick to …”

  “Here,” said Andy, summarily, to Parthy; and left her in charge of business. Down the aisle with the light quick step that was almost a scamper; up the stage at a bound. “Best advance sale we’ve had since we started out. We never played this town before. License was too high. But here it is, not eleven o’clock, and half the house gone already.” He peered into the darkened room.

  From its soft fur nest in the old sealskin muff the marmoset poked its tragic mask and whimpered like a sick baby. This morning there was a strange resemblance between the pinched and pathetic face on the pillow and that of the little sombre-eyed monkey. By now there was quite a little crowd about Julie’s door. Mis’ Means had joined them and could be heard murmuring about mustard plasters and a good hot something or other. Andy entered the little room with the freedom of an old friend. He looked sharply down at the face on the pillow. The keen eyes plunged deep into the tortured eyes that stared piteously up at him. Something he saw there caused him to reach out with one brown paw, none too immaculate, and pat that other slim brown hand clutching the coverlet so tensely. “Why, Jule, what’s—— Say, s’pose you folks clear out and let me and Jule and Steve here talk things over quiet. Nobody ain’t going to get well with this mob scene you’re putting on. Scat!” Andy could distinguish between mental and physical anguish.

  They shifted—Doc, Elly, Schultzy, Mis’ Means, Catchem the torpid. Another moment and they would have moved reluctantly away. But Parthy, torn between her duty at the ticket window and her feminine curiosity as to the cause of the commotion at Julie’s door became, suddenly, all woman. Besides—demon statistician that she was—she suddenly had remembered a curious coincidence in connection with this sudden illness of Julie’s. She slammed down the ticket window, banged the box-office door, sailed down the aisle. As she approached Doc was saying for the dozenth time: