“Not the usual sort of trouble.” Seth sat down again, and he and Dana paddled closer. “But we need to be thirty miles downriver today, an’ the way we’re goin’ we won’t get there ’til half past Sunday.”
“I’m not surprised, in that thing.” The two boats were close enough for her to see the condition of the scow. “You’d be better off rowing a coffin. I won’t ask why you’re in such a hurry. But I’ll tell you this: if you’re asking for a ride, it’ll cost you.”
She turned. A gray-haired man in shirtsleeves had appeared from below. He must have noticed that the engine was throttled back and the Cypress Queen was no longer moving. “It’s all right, Dad,” she said. “You eat your breakfast while it’s hot. We might be doing a little extra business.”
“Hmph.” He nodded and vanished below. Art felt his stomach rumble at the mention of food. He was as hungry as he was tired.
“How about a tow instead of a ride?” Seth asked.
“Can do that if you’d rather. But that’ll cost you, too, just as much.”
“How much?”
“How you gonna pay? Forget credit, and forget paper money. They’re using them again in Washington, but out on the bay they’re not worth squat.” The woman was in her mid-forties, with a tanned skin showing the lines and wrinkles of too many hours of sun and salt water. She was close enough to peer down into the flat bottom of the scow, which was a jumble of their discarded clothes and blankets and carrying bags. “You don’t seem overloaded with worldly goods, if you don’t mind my saying.”
Seth turned to Art. “What we got? I hate to give food an’ weapons.”
“Clothes, or blankets?” said Dana. “But we don’t know what the weather will do next. Tomorrow could be as cold as yesterday.”
“Two minutes more and we’re off,” the woman called down. “With or without you. We got work to do. We don’t got all day.”
“Oh, hell.” Dana stood up. “I hate to do this, but I guess I have to.” She had stripped down to her blouse for the hot job of rowing, and now she lifted it at the front and reached down inside her pants. She stood for a few moments, pushing her right hand deeper. After a few seconds she wriggled and crouched over farther.
“We don’t take payment in bumps and grinds,” the woman said. “Though I know Dad will hate it when he finds out what he’s missing.”
“These?” Dana at last had her hand free and she raised it. She was holding two coins between finger and thumb. “They’re gold — solid gold.”
“How do I know that?” But the woman sounded interested. “Gold is good, but can you prove it?”
“They’re half-ounce twenty-two carat special issue, Canadian mint. They were a Silver Jubilee item, Queen’s head on one side and a flower design on the other. I’ve had them in my family for nearly fifty years. You can take a close look at them when we’re on board. We’ll give them to you when you drop us off.”
“I thought you didn’t want to come aboard. Nature boy there” — the woman pointed at Seth — “said you wanted a tow.”
“Don’t listen to him. We want the boat towed, but these coins are worth a lot. We’re entitled to more.”
“Like what?”
“You mentioned a hot breakfast. And I’d love a place to pee where I don’t have to stick my backside out over the river and wonder if I’m going to fall in.”
The woman laughed. “Men lucked out on their plumbin’. But don’t you just hate dealin’ with females? They always negotiate for extras. All right, you can come aboard and we’ll run a line to your boat. You’re lucky, I’d never do this if we was headin’ upriver. And don’t blame me if she runs under when we start movin’. She ain’t built for speed.”
“Well, she’s certainly not built for comfort.” Dana went first. She put her coins away in her pocket, made a bundle of her extra clothes, and stepped across from the scow. A short ladder attached to the side of the Cypress Queen took her onto its deck. Art followed, almost missing his step. From fatigue or hunger, he felt dizzy. The smells of cooking made him salivate as soon as he set foot on the dark planking.
Seth waited, attaching the rope that the woman threw to him to a heavy metal ring bolted to the front of the scow. Then he came aboard in a single rubbery vault over the rail.
“Where you from?” The woman was already back at the wheel, powering up the engines. The Cypress Queen began to glide forward across the still surface of the river.
“Buckhannon.” Seth made sure the scow was being towed smoothly behind. “You?”
“Clarksburg. Thought I recognized West Virginia in your voice.”
“Same here. I’m long time gone, though.”
“Me, too. I’m Eastern Shore now, got my mother looking after my kids ’cross the bay in Pocomoke City. Wouldn’t want them around here, even if things was normal. You still got plenty of West Virginia in your voice. Lucky for you, or I’d probably have said no.”
“Pretty bad reason to let somebody aboard your ship, the way he talks.”
“Ain’t that the truth? Never said I was smart, did I?” The woman nodded toward the hatch. “Go ahead, tell Dad you got breakfast comin’ you.”
Three steps led down to a cramped but tidy cabin. The old man nodded when Dana delivered his daughter’s message. He gestured to bowls and plates on a rack by one of the long narrow windows and to a big iron pot standing in a hollow at one end of the table. Then he stood up and left without a word.
The woman appeared a minute later. “Dad said he’d rather spell me for a while at the wheel. He’s none too sociable mornings. We got nothing fancy here, fish chowder, corn bread, coffee. We never expected visitors, see, but there’s plenty. Dad likes to feel he can eat anytime he wants.”
Art took the filled bowl that Dana passed to him. The chowder didn’t bear looking at too closely. It included fish heads and fish livers and fish tongues and other less recognizable bits and pieces, thickened with sun-dried tomatoes and corn and seasoned with pepper. It was hot and rich and, like the bitter coffee sweetened in the pot with molasses, totally delicious.
The first bowl brought Art back to life. He nodded at the offer of a refill, set it in front of him, and kept eating. Across the table, Seth and the woman were talking. Their accents had thickened, and they spoke about unknown people and strange places. It occurred to Art that they were, in some perverse sense, flirting. This was another side of Seth, mixed in with the ruthlessness and cunning and animal vigor.
Nobody was as simple as he seemed — as maybe she wanted to seem. Dana, next to Art, had finished eating and was lolling toward him, her eyes closed and her head resting on his shoulder and left upper arm. Was she sleeping, or just pretending to? He stared at the spoon he was holding. It still dipped into the bowl and carried chowder to his mouth, but the operation seemed less and less under his control. He was vaguely aware of the old man sticking his head into the cabin and saying something to his daughter. If the man was here, and she was here, then who was steering the Cypress Queen}
Not Art’s department, he decided. It was one thing in the world that he didn’t have to worry about. He leaned his head to the left, to rest it for a moment on Dana’s.
And suddenly he was asleep, as fast and deep as if the chowder in his belly had been seasoned with opium rather than pepper.
22
Art was awakened far too soon, by Seth shaking his shoulders. He opened his eyes and found Dana beside him rubbing her eyes and scowling. Neither the woman nor her father was in the cabin. The little room was stiflingly hot.