High Water by Richard Bissell

Author:Richard Bissell [Bissell, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mississippi River, towboat, stern wheeler, coal, satire, steamboat, deckhands, love, drowning, flood
ISBN: 9781618865670
Publisher: eNet Press Inc.; Lake Oswego OR 97034 USA; www.enetpress.com
Published: 2012-11-06T05:00:00+00:00

When the coffee was done we took our cups into the mess-room and sat down at the table with the red and white checkered tablecloth. I got up and took a handful of cookies out of one of the cookie boxes and picked up a couple of apples and sat down again and gave the Cup an apple.

“What difference anyway?” he said. “Suppose it goes to twenty-three feet, what then? We can find someplace to tie off. Then we will set there on top of the flood drinking this famous brand of Casey’s favorite coffee. What’s the difference as long as we are on the payroll?”

“How about your old lady? She is going to have six fits when she starts reading the papers. Listen, Bolts and Nuts,” I said, “I don’t think your mammoth brain has grasped the idea here yet.”

“Never mind the old lady, she won’t worry none. Milly she is past all that, you know,” he said, taking out his pearl-handled pocketknife and beginning to peel his apple scientifically. “But what didn’t my mammouth brain get ahold of? What do you mean by that?”

“Why you god-damn grease monkey do you reelize we are already above the flood stage of 1939? What we are doing out here at all is one for Ignatz to answer.”

“Oh you boys on deck are always in a sweat about something,” he said. “You know I put an egg in this here coffee. It tastes some better, don’t it?”

“Why don’t you get rid of that woman of yours if you are so much smarter than us fools on deck?” I said. “By god I would unload if I was you and that is for certain sure.”

“No you wouldn’t, Duke, not if I told you the whole story sometime. I am stuck with Milly for good and all and there ain’t a blessed thing in the world anybody can do about it.”

“Well,” I said, “go ahead and tell me about it. It will get my mind off this swell mess we are in up here.”

The Grease Cup kept working on his apple, peeling it very slow and careful and not looking at me.

“Well, Duke, I guess I never told you, but once upon a time, about ten years ago when Milly and me was first married why we had a kid. But the kid died when he was about a week old.”

I begun to wish I had never brought up the subject, but it was too late now.

“After the baby died why it seems she couldn’t have no more kids. She took it hard. Milly loved kids and she knew I wanted kids. We had done a lot of god-damn foolish talk about what we would make of him if he was a boy, like a lawyer or a doctor and all that. And I remember I said if it was a girl I wanted her to have pigtails and Milly she laughed and said that was too old-fashioned. So she took it hard. And of course it was up to me to pretend like I didn’t care.

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