“That’s not nice, talking like that,” Ferris said, his voice low, close to her. “You want me to wash your little mouth out with soap? I will, I’ll wash your little ears, too, and your little neck. I’ll wash any parts you want. How’s that sound to you?”
“You’re sure,” Richie said, “you didn’t dial it wrong.”
“I was a telephone operator twenty-five years. I don’t dial wrong numbers.”
“And you’re positive when you wrote it down—”
“Listen to me, will you? I know numbers. I hear a seven-digit number it registers in my head till I jot it down. And there it is, right there.”
He looked past her shoulder where she was bent over the desk, hands flat on the surface, staring at the number.
She’d said they were in Missouri someplace. St. Louis? No, that wasn’t it. Richie said he’d never been to Missouri. He’d been to East St. Louis, but that was over in Illinois. East St. Louis, shit, you had to stand in line to commit a crime, but didn’t tell her that.
This woman was pretty smart. She knew something was wrong and even said it, though more to herself than to him. “There’s something wrong somewhere.”
“You mentioned you had trouble with your phone.”
“I had trouble with callers, not the instrument. I told you, I referred the matter to the Annoyance Call Bureau and they put a trap on my line.”
“They listen in?”
“No, a trap records what number is calling this number. That’s how you catch obscene callers.”
“You had any?”
“Yes, I did, I’m sorry to say.”
“What’d he do, talk dirty to you?”
“I would never ever in my life repeat one word of what that man said.”
“You have to wonder about people like that,” Richie said, “what gets in their head and makes them become perverts. Here, let me help you.” Lenore was groaning as she tried to straighten up from the desk. Richie got under one of her arms and lifted.
“I should never bend over that far from the waist,” Lenore said. “It’s like somebody stuck a knife in me.”
“That’s your sacroiliac. I mentioned I could give you a back rub. I learned how from a foster mom I had one time named Jackie. She was some kind of therapist before that, worked with cripples. Let’s get you on the couch. ... No, let’s get you down right here on the floor, over here on the carpet. I’ll get a pillow for your head, so you’ll be comfortable.”
Lenore eased down to her hands and knees on the living-room floor. Now she looked up at Richie
taking off his ironworker’s jacket. “You sure you know what you’re doing?” “Yes, ma’am.” “You aren’t gonna hurt me, are you?”
17
CARMEN OPENED HER EYES to see the lamp turned on, Wayne kneeling next to the bed looking at her, waiting.
“You awake?”
“I am now. What time is it?”
“Quarter after two.”
“You must’ve closed the bar.”
“We barely made last call. I’ve been working since I left here this morning till just a while ago. Had supper on the towboat, it wasn’t bad either.”
Carmen could smell the strong soap Wayne used. She stared at his face, for a moment wanting to touch it, the tough weathered skin shiny clean but drawn. He looked worn out.
“Why didn’t you call?”
“I tried to. I forgot the number and the operator wouldn’t tell me ’cause it’s unlisted. I said, it’s my house. Didn’t do any good.”
“I called the drydock when you didn’t come home,” Carmen said. “Whoever it was said you hadn’t been there all day.”
“The foreman knew where I was.” Wayne smiled. “That’s why we sound a little cool, huh? I’ll show you my coveralls, you’ll see I wasn’t out chasing women. You know where I was? On the Curtis Moore, the harbor tug. We brought some barges up from Westlake, putting together a tow. They’re gonna leave first thing in the morning, like in four hours. That boat I helped repair.”
“Your new life,” Carmen said.
“Well, I’m looking it over. You get out there, talk to guys who’ve been on the river a while, they wouldn’t think of doing anything else.”
“Maybe it’s all they know.”
“It’s more than that. I think the river gets to you.”
Carmen rolled her eyes at him.
“Well, it’s what you said, it’s a life, it’s not just the river. It’s places, it’s...like they’re talking about running the Lower Memphis bridge southbound, how you come along Interstate-Forty, stay close to Mud Island and point at the High-Rise Motel. Like you’re driving along the highway, only you have a quarter of a mile of barges out in front of you.”
Carmen said, “Not like walking on high steel.”
“It’s different, yeah, but you get the same kind of feeling that, you know, you’re doing something. It’s not just a job where you get paid, you go home and put hamburgers on the grill and sit there thinking, Shit, I gotta go to work tomorrow.”
“When did you put hamburgers on the grill?”
“You know what I mean.”
“It’s big stuff,” Carmen said.
“That’s right. It’s not a building you can look at after, but you know you’ve done something.”
“Like today?”
“Yeah, putting that tow together, getting ready . . .” He stopped and said, “What’d you do today?”
Remembering her. He did it sometimes when she least expected and it made her feel comfortable, nothing to worry about. She said, “You first.”
“Well, this morning I’m on the drydock, a company boat arrives with a tow. They come down from Burlington, Iowa, with hopper barges loaded with grain they have to get to New Orleans by a certain day, a ship’s waiting at the dock, so it’s what they call a hot tow. But they also have eight coal barges they’re supposed to drop off at Cairo, Illinois, a thousand ton of coal in each one, you talk about big stuff. But if they stop at Cairo they won’t get to New Orleans on time ...You listening?”
“A thousand tons of coal in each one.”
“You feel all right? You look tired.”
“I am. I just got to sleep before you came home.”
“What were you doing?”
“Lying here trying to sleep . . . thinking.”
“You want to leave, don’t you?”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“You know what I hear is a good place? St. Louis. A hundred and ten miles north of here. Burlington, where they picked up the grain, is another couple hundred miles. Anyway, they have to get to New Orleans, so they leave the eight coal barges here for the Robert R. Nally, the boat I worked on. It’s repaired now, ready to go. We used the Curtis Moore to bring up eight barges of crushed rock from the quarry at Westlake and now we’ve got a sixteen-barge tow. What they’ll do is drop the coal off at Cairo and haul the rock down to Louisiana to use as building revetments. See, the federal government won’t let contractors use shell anymore, you know, seashells, to mix their concrete. So they use this crushed rock from up here.”
Wayne paused and Carmen waited, knowing he wasn’t finished. Finally she said, “Yeah ...?”
“They asked me if I want to go.”
“Are you?”
“It’s okay with the drydock foreman. I could get off just about anywhere I want and catch a northbound tow to come back.”
“Is that river talk?”
“What?”
“Catch a tow?”
“I don’t know—I’d only be gone a few days.”
“Then why don’t you go?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Well, if they’re leaving this morning . . .”
“In about four hours.”
“You’d better get some sleep.”