Houseboat Girl (19 page)

On the way home, Daddy said, “Let’s go by the river and see how it looks.”

“It looks the same as it always did,” said Mama.

“Let’s take the river road, Edie,” said Daddy. “I want to see what the river looks like to land folks.”

“You afraid it might change its mind and start runnin’ upstream?” asked Aunt Edie.

“No,” said Daddy. “But take me off this river for even half a day and I’m lost. I just can’t be satisfied to save my soul!”

Aunt Edie laughed and drove along the river road. She stopped at gaps in the willows through which the river could be seen.

“When I was workin’ in that factory up there in Detroit makin’ big money,” said Daddy, “I could shut my eyes, imagine I had a line on such and such a point and was catchin’ me a great big catfish! I could just
see
it—even when I was poundin’ metal all day long.”

“You’re a sad case!” Mama laughed.

“I can’t help it,” said Daddy. “Even to go to town for half a day makes me downright homesick for that old river.”

“But Daddy,” said Patsy, “town is
nice!
With all those stores!”

“The river is better,” said Daddy.

When they got home Patsy changed clothes and skinned the cat on the porch rafter.

One day the next week Patsy went over to Fork-a-Deer Island with Daddy and the dog Blackie to get grubworms. With the coming of cooler weather, it was too late for grasshoppers, so Daddy had to change bait to something new. He took his double-bitted axe with him, came to an old hollow log and split it open. Inside was a nest of fifty or seventy-five grubworms, that would, if undisturbed, turn into horseflies. He started to pick them up.

“Here, take these!” Daddy gave Patsy a handful of the fat white squirming worms. “Put them in the bucket. They won’t hurt you.”

Patsy took them in her hand, but before she found the bucket, she screamed. “They bit me! They bit a piece right out of my finger!”

Daddy laughed. “You must have squeezed them too hard.”

Patsy brought the bucket over. “You can put them in the bucket yourself.”

Blackie ran sniffing around in circles, yelping.

“Oh, look! Blackie’s after a rabbit,” said Patsy. “Go get a rabbit for our supper, Blackie!”

Daddy went from one log to another and also split open some rotten stumps. Soon he had the bucket nearly full. “Come here, Patsy!” he called.

There in the hollow of a log was a snake about eighteen inches long.

“Look at this purty snake,” said Daddy.

Patsy thought it was pretty, too. “It looks just like peppermint candy, with red stripes going round and round, but I guess I won’t eat it! Don’t kill it, Daddy. Let it go.”

They watched the snake slide off and disappear under the fallen leaves.

The sun was warm on the island bank when they went back to the johnboat. Blackie came up panting and exhausted, minus a rabbit.

“This seems to be our day for snakes,” said Daddy, looking up.

Patsy ducked. Over her head, draped over the branch of a tree, was a long brown water snake with reddish undersides spotted red and black.

“It’s all ready to drop in the water to catch a fish or a frog,” said Daddy.

“Just so it doesn’t drop on me,” said Patsy.

“Don’t you want it for a pet?” asked Daddy.

“No!” said Patsy. “Mama won’t let me have snakes. Don’t you remember she dumped that king snake of mine in the river? But I would like a turtle. I just want me a turtle so bad—a great big old one, not one of those teeny dirty mud turtles. Can’t you find me a snapper, Daddy?”

“A snapper!” Daddy laughed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, girl. In all the trips I’ve made up and down this old river, I’ve never seen a snapping turtle. They stay deep down in the mud at the bottom of the river or in a dried-up slew. You wouldn’t want one of those fellers. They’re mean—they’ll take right after you in the boat. They weigh forty or fifty pounds, and they got a regular hawk bill and horns on their back.”

Back at the fish barge, Daddy poured boiling water on the grubworms in the bucket.

“That’ll make ’em tough,” he said, “so the shrimp can’t bite ’em off. That’ll give the fish a chance at them.”

Patsy sat down and helped him bait his hooks. It took a long time because there were over six hundred grubworms. Patsy counted them. After the hooks were baited, she went out with Daddy to set his lines. She always enjoyed the river on her trips alone with Daddy. By nightfall it had turned chilly, so it was good to get back to the houseboat again.

Inside, it was warm and cozy. A wood fire was burning in the little cast-iron stove, and Mama was making sorghum cakes for supper. A man who had a sorghum mill on the island had brought some molasses to the store and Mama had bought a gallon. She mixed a batter and poured sorghum molasses in. She cooked the batter in a big skillet like cornbread. When it was done she mixed a second batch.

“Goody, goody!” cried Patsy. “I smell sorghum cakes!”

Milly and Dan and Bunny came up sniffing, too.

“I can never make enough,” Mama told Daddy. “These kids would eat a washtubful. They really like ’em!”

“No wonder,” said Daddy. “They’re all empty clean down to their toes.”

Tom the cat came up meowing and Blackie the dog tugged on Daddy’s pants’ leg. They were both hungry, so they had to have their share.

Mama spoke to the pets. “You both belong to this outfit,” she said. “You’re worse than the kids, the way you like sweets. I never knew a dog and cat with a sweet tooth before.”

When everybody was full of sorghum cakes and the other children had left the table, Patsy put her arm around Daddy’s shoulder.

“Now that Andy Dillard’s our friend,” she said, “we’re stayin’ right here at O’Donald Bend, aren’t we, Daddy?”

“It all depends on how the fish keep bitin’,” said Daddy.

“Andy Dillard says there are plenty of fish in the river for you and him, too,” said Patsy.

“Sure,” said Daddy, “if you can catch ’em. Cold weather’s comin’ soon. I can’t fish trotlines after it’s cold. Gotta get my hoop nets out. Gotta knit some new ones.”

“If you catch lots of fish,” Patsy went on, “then you’ll get us a house, won’t you?”

“A house?” said Daddy. “You hankerin’ for a house again? What’s the matter with this houseboat? It’s a sight better than these little old shacks the sharecroppers live in. I thought you was a borned houseboat girl. What’s the matter with the river, I’d like to know?”

“Nothing,” said Patsy. “It’s still the same old river. But I’d like a house up on the river bank. I wouldn’t want to be
a long ways off
from the river, you understand…I’d like it to be where I could look out the windows and see it sometimes …”

Daddy laughed and laughed. “Spoken like a real river girl!” he said. “She wants to get, away from the river, yet she don’t want to get away from it. The river’s in your blood, girl. You just can’t help it.”

“Oh no,” said Patsy. “My blood’s not all river. I like town, too.”

“You’re just not town-broke,” said Mama with a laugh. “Anybody that doesn’t know how to cross a street on a green light!”

“Couldn’t we get a house up on the river bank?” asked Patsy again.

“Now, Patsy,” said Mama, “you stop naggin’ your daddy. He’s tired tonight. When that girl sets her mind on something she wants, she won’t give a body peace until she gets it. Of all my kids, she’s the nagginest!”

“Your mother’s right, Patsy,” said Daddy. “Stop your nagging.”

“It’s only a house I want,” said Patsy. “A house on the river bank.”

“A
house!”
scolded Mama.
“Only
a
house
—as if we was livin’ in a tent, I s’pose.”

“If we stay here all winter,” said Daddy, “we’ll get up on the river bank all right.”

“We will?” cried Patsy eagerly.

“The river will take us up and set us right down whether we want to go or not,” said Daddy.

“Just wait till high water comes long about February,” said Mama.

“High water?” asked Patsy.

“That’s when the people in
houses
get in trouble,” said Daddy, “even the people with their houses set high on stilts like all those up the river road to Tomato. But high water’s no trouble to a shantyboater. He’s not anchored down to one spot. He just goes up and down, up and down as the river goes. So he’s perfectly safe.”

Patsy looked out the window at the high mudbank rising from the shallow river. The houseboat was so low now, she could not see any sign of store or road above. It was hard to imagine that the houseboat would be lifted all the way up there on a rising river. What a terrific amount of water it would take to fill that great deep river valley!

“Wait till the winter snows melt up there in the north and all that water comes pouring down the Ohio, the Missouri and Mississippi rivers!” said Daddy. “We’ll get up on top of the river bank all right!”

“Oh goody!” cried Patsy. “Up on
top
of the river bank! I can hardly wait!”

P
ATSY AND
D
AN APPEARED
on the river bank, pulling something behind them. “What’s that you got?” asked Daddy.

“It’s a Christmas tree,” said Patsy. “Dan and I got it in the woods. Tomorrow’s Christmas. You’ll have to move those nets, so we can get in.”

Daddy shook his head. “Can’t move them till I get done.”

“We’ll set it up in the living room, Dan,” Patsy said. She started across the stage plank, but Daddy’s great hoop nets on hoops four feet in diameter, covered the entire porch and blocked her path. She and Dan sat down on the stage plank to wait.

“Daddy’s in the knittin’ business,” said Mama. “Don’t bother him now.”

Mama sat in an easy chair with a warm coat on, untangling a great mass of twisted Nylon fish cord.

“This stuff has got into nine hundred and ninety-nine knots,” she said. “Nylon is terrible, it tangles so bad.”

“But it will last ten times as long,” said Daddy. “That acid in the river water eats the cotton lines up in no time.”

“I’d rather sew on my quilts,” said Mama. “When I’m shut in all winter long, I don’t do a thing but piece quilts. I want to get that Flower Garden done soon…”

Abe Foster was busy knitting hoop nets for winter fishing. His wooden shuttle moved briskly in and out. Seven large hoops were already joined together with a knotted crisscross netting. Now he was working on two “throats”—narrow openings where the fish could go in but not get out. He hung the tail of the net to a porch rafter and let the hoops fall.

“They’re purty,” he said, looking at his handiwork, “when you get ’em done without any tar on ’em. They’re even purty after they’re tarred. Not everybody can build a nice net like that! Andy Dillard buys his ready-made, but he can have that kind. I wouldn’t give fifteen cents for a ready-made net.”

“But, Daddy, our Christmas tree!” cried Patsy impatiently. “We got to set it up and get it trimmed.”

“Where you goin’ to put it?” asked Mama.

“Inside—in the front corner by the window,” said Patsy.

“It’s too hot in there,” said Mama, “with the heater so close. All the needles would fall off before night.”

On the porch where the old leather car seat had sat as a couch all summer, a barrel of oil had been placed on wooden horses. A pipe from the barrel ran under the hull and through the floor in the front room to feed the heater. Although the houseboat walls were only of wallboard covered with wallpaper, the rooms stayed cozy and warm, helped by the heat of the sun on the flat roof and the wood fire in the little cast-iron stove in the kitchen.

“Your mama keeps it hot enough inside to roast the cat!” said Daddy. “I can’t stand it to come indoors hardly.”

“But where can I put the tree then?” asked Patsy.

“Out here on the porch will be better,” said Mama.

“But there’s no room,” said Patsy. “Look at all the junk. Look at those big old hoop nets of Daddy’s. Why does he have to build nets on Christmas?”

“We have to eat on Christmas, too, honey,” said Mama. “Let’s see how big your tree is.”

Dan stood it up on the stage plank and they looked at it.

“It’s not very big…” said Mama doubtfully.