Dreadful Skin Read Free

believed—then he would have let her find it sooner. If she’d gotten her answers before that last night on the Mary Byrd , then we might have found our separate ways home, or to whatever destinations we had in mind. We wouldn’t have wound up where we did, lying down dead in burned-up clothes at the bottom of a river. The river washed us all clean. It washed us down to nothing but bones, and all our bones were the same.
    Or that’s just what I think. I been wrong, though.
    ***
    As I told you, the trouble began after supper, as it’s likely to do. Not all the strangers wanted to eat together, but there are always a few who like it—who enjoy the traveling, and like talking to all the strange new people you find on a boat, or on a road. These people find each other.
    So over supper that night there was a handful of folks. The gambler was there, teasing the nun in a friendly way, and she didn’t act like she minded it. There were three others, too—including the captain. We were anchored on account of the weather. It was pouring down outside and the water kept sloshing up over the decks.
    Mary was riding low in the water, anyhow—because of what she was moving other than people. There was a lot of rocking, and since we were sitting low, the captain didn’t want to rush it. I didn’t want to argue with him, but I didn’t like him being downstairs with no one at the boat’s wheel, either.
    That might have been silly, though. I didn’t know enough about the way boats worked to know if it was bad of him to join us. I guess he could’ve had someone else up there helping him; I knew we had a roof pilot too, but I hadn’t seen him around.
    Could be the captain was just hungry.
    Well, we fed him. He’d have had more room to eat if he hadn’t drank so much. It made me nervous to watch him. This was the man who drove us down the river. Maybe he should’ve had a better idea when to quit pouring himself more, at least while other folks were watching.
    I heard him talking to the other passengers, and they didn’t mind him so they let him talk. His voice sounded like childhood to me. It was low and sleepy more often than not, and even when he drank wine he smelled like a cold southern drink served on a porch.
    I had a feeling about him, like he’d been in the war, and it hadn’t gone so good for him. But he was a man from south of the Ohio, so no, I guess it wouldn’t have. I wondered how bad it’d been for him, but it wasn’t my place to ask, so I didn’t. He wore that old defeat all over him. He wore it like it was an important thing, or something valuable that he wouldn’t let out of his sight. But it wasn’t. And we all knew it.
    “This is my boat,” he told them around the table. “I’ve found a buyer, though. When we get to Chattanooga we’ll stay a few days—and I’ll hand off the boat, and I’ll take my money. That’ll be it for me, then. No more of this river business.”
    “Has it treated you so poorly?” The nun asked. Her accent was as heavy as his, but it came from somewhere father away. “You seem like a comfortable man. You’ve earned a life from the river, haven’t you?”
    “I have. I’ve earned a second life, Sister.” They all called her Sister, except for once in a while, one of them would call her Sister Eileen.
    Mr. Cooper pulled his pretty watch out of his pocket and checked the time. Supper was over and it might have been getting late, but that’s not what he was thinking. He was wondering if it was late enough to bug someone into playing cards with him. But he was willing to wait until the nun left. I guess he thought it was being respectful.
    The captain was too drunk to be any good for poker, but one of the other two men might have been dumb enough to take Mr. Cooper on. One by one they retired, though. And then the captain did too. He said he was going back to the wheel, like he was going to start moving again, but we knew he wasn’t.
    The rain was coming down hard,