The River Queen Read Free Page A

with two river pilots named Tom and Jerry seemed like a safe bet to me. I envisioned a cartoon cat chasing around a savvy mouse. Now I’m not so sure.
    I’ve read stories of pilots who, for one reason or another, needed to lighten their loads. Before the river was managed and dredged, ships often ran aground. About a hundred years ago in the late fall when the river runs low, a packet ship filled with German immigrants got wedged onto a sandbar. In order to get off, the packet boat unloaded the sixty or so immigrants and their families. They unloaded their luggage. Then, as the boat floated off the sandbar, the crew left them in the middle of winter on Island 65 with minimum provisions, never to be heard from again.
    The river is filled with hundreds of nameless islands and secluded backwaters, those dark spaces on the navigational maps only experienced river pilots know. Ideal for depositing human remains. If I complain about the coffee or if I don’t want to swab the deck, what’s to stop them? The eagles would pick me down to the bones. The truth is, I don’t know these guys from Adam. I’m going on instinct and, as my husband is quick to point out, I’ve been wrong before.
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    I T WAS at my nephew Matt’s wedding two years ago that the idea of going down the river got into my head. Matt, a nationally ranked wrestler with a cauliflower ear and a bone-crunching grip, was marrying a lovely girl named Gail, a black belt in karate, who could “kill him” with swords, as Matt likes to brag. The wedding was being held in La Crosse on the banks of the Mississippi.
    The ceremony looked like a convention for bouncers. Matt’s wrestling team served as ushers, and they ate all the shrimp, then went to work on the mushroom caps. It was raining and gray, but as the strains of the wedding march were heard, the sun came out and the river glittered like gold—“a miracle,” the guests would later recall. After the reception the wrestlers built a bonfire and we sang “This Land Is Your Land” and “Little Boxes,” accompanied by an acoustic guitar and a set of bongos, as the river, dark, mysterious, and beckoning, churned by.
    The next day Larry and I went for a walk. It was a clear and crisp May afternoon and we needed to decompress from so much family time. As we strolled along the river, I spotted a houseboat. It was small and white with neat blue trim, shutters, an upper deck, white curtains in the windows—just sitting there, as if expecting company. I liked its name. Reckless Abandon. “Let’s have a look,” I said, and we wandered over.
    It was a small vessel, but it had a sweet galley, a nice roof deck, and some cramped sleeping quarters. Gazing through a window, we could see that the whole inside wasn’t much bigger than a kitchen in a Manhattan studio apartment. I walked around to the back where a man with a grizzled face sat with a fishing line in one hand, a cigarette in the other. “Is this your houseboat?” I asked.
    â€œYes it is.”
    He flung his cigarette into the water and introduced himself as “Smokey” [ sic ]. “That’s cuz I smoke so much, but I’m gonna quit.”
    â€œCan we see it?”
    â€œSure,” Smokey said. And he took us inside.
    I’d never been inside a houseboat before, but this was cozy. I liked the curtains, the windows, the open feel. “The nice thing about the Mississippi,” Smokey told us, “is that you can moor up wherever you go. If the weather gets rough, you can tie up to an island. You know, like Huck Finn, you can just go wherever you want to go.”
    As I looked out across the river, I tried to imagine what it would be like—going down the river in a houseboat like this one. Or maybe even this one. “Don’t let this river fool you,” Smokey went on. “She can be a bitch.”
    â€œHow far can this boat go?” I