Wayne drank coffee with the captain in the pilothouse, with the chief engineer down in the racket of diesel engines, with the mate and the two off-duty deckhands at the long table in the lounge. Coffee with noon dinner and pie for dessert, the woman cook asking Wayne if he wanted her to a-la-mode that for him. The table reminded him at first of a steel-company trailer at noon hour, except here they talked about Cardinals and Cubs instead of Tigers and Jays and the deckhands were young guys, they were loud and laughed at stupid remarks.
The mate, on the river twenty years, sat hunched over his coffee, holding it on the table with two hands. When he stood up he was still hunched over, one of those skinny guys with high bony shoulders and slicked-back dark hair Wayne saw in cheap downtown bars after he came off the steel. The mate said the work suited him, he liked the thirty days on and thirty off. He was leaving the boat at Cairo to go visit his girlfriend in Marysville, she was doing a stay at the Ohio Women’s Reformatory. Wayne asked him if he wanted to be a pilot. The mate said he knew the river and the Rules of the Road backward, but the chickenshit government people wouldn’t let him have a license on account of he only had one eye, this one here was glass. Once of the deckhands said the mate had as much chance of getting up to the pilothouse as growing hair on his tongue. The other deckhand thought that was pretty funny and the mate got up and walked out of the lounge. The deckhands told Wayne the mate had been fired and was being put ashore for getting caught drinking on the boat. It wasn’t allowed, unless you went overboard and if you came up they might give you a shot.
They talked about barge lines they’d worked for, about captains and pilots that were pricks, about guys falling overboard, some popping up astern, some not and getting carried downstream to be found on a sandbar or lying cold on the riprap, the crushed rocks you saw along a revetment. It was slippery out on the barges from all the grease and shit, or you could trip on a ratchet, and if you went over at night you better have a flashlight on you. It sounded like they wanted him to understand this was no place for sissies. Wayne could have recited the book to them on falling from all kinds of places, buildings, bridges, factories, but didn’t; or tell them his trade or where he was from and the deckhands didn’t ask.
He began to think you had to start young in this river business. As in any other.
He was alert the first few hours of the trip, then felt it becoming tiresome. Even if you were working there wasn’t that much to do when the boat was under way, and with all those barges it only went about eight or ten miles an hour. They’d be moving south making headway, flank around a bend and be going in the opposite direction for the next hour or so. There was nothing to see but mist and rain most of the trip and you had to wear a life preserver when you went on deck. When he tried to forget it on purpose, the mate caught him, asked Wayne if he thought he had special privileges. Once in a while that morning there’d be a glimpse of shore or an island. There’s Counterfeit Rock. There’s Burnham. Over there’s Commerce, Missouri. The sky cleared by the time they got to Dogtooth Bend, a name to store away and tell Carmen. After that the points of interest were Greenleaf Bend, the I-57 highway bridge, Eliza’s Point on the Illinois side, some more bridges and finally Cairo.
To the mate: “Is it a nice town?”
“What, Cairo? No, it ain’t.”
“I’m thinking of getting off with you.”
“Do what you want,” the mate said.
With the end of the trip in sight Wayne returned to the pilothouse. He could actually see a line where the two rivers met, the muddy Mississippi running past hard, the beautiful Ohio settling in a pool to keep out of its way. Rounding Cairo Point the captain said, “Now I’m gonna stick my head over into the Ohio, leave my stern in the Mississippi and just kinda flip her around, like the catch on an outhouse door.”
“It’s been a trip,” Wayne said, “but if you don’t mind, I’m getting off here.”
“We have better days than this, when you can see the countryside. We have worse ones too.”
Wayne said, “There’s all that engine noise and vibration,” and was surprised he thought that; ironworking was way noisier. “Or else I’m too old to learn a new trade.”
“Ride down to New Orleans with me,” the captain said. “That town will make you feel young again.”
By the time they tied up at Waterfront Services, Wayne was out of his coveralls and had on his ironworker’s jacket. He picked up his overnight bag and followed the mate carrying his suitcase across barges to get ashore. They walked past the floodwall and through a decaying area where bums hung out, sat in discarded chairs and car seats around a fire that became a cloud of smudge rising in the damp air. Wayne said it looked like more rain was coming. The mate didn’t say or care. They walked a long block to the Skipper Lounge—Beer, Wine, Liquors & Pizza—that was maybe one notch above a skid-row bar. No cars in front, full of guys off boats.
They ordered bourbon and shells of beer, the mate looking around at the rivermen in here, nodding to some, Wayne looking at his watch. Ten to five. He’d have one and call his honey, tell her the good news, that he’d be home in the morning if not before. They tossed down the shots and ordered another one each.
“I have to see about a ride back,” Wayne said. “I was told it can be arranged. Here or down at Waterfront Services.”
The mate stood hunched, leaning on the bar. He looked past his shoulder at Wayne. “You had enough, huh?”
Wayne shrugged, sipped his beer.
“I could’ve told you.”
Wayne watched him straighten to drink his shot.
“You could’ve told me what?”
“You weren’t ever gonna cut it.”
The mate looked at the bartender for another shot, pointing a finger at his glass. Wayne looked at his watch. It was still ten to five.
“How’d you know that?”
“What?”
“You don’t think I can cut it.”
“You remind me of these college boys come along in the summer, looking for a trip on the river. They last about two days. But that’s longer’n you did—up there Mr. Big Shot in the pilothouse.” The mate tossed off his bourbon and got back down on the bar before he said to Wayne, peeking past his shoulder at him, “What I wondered was if the captain let you suck him off.”
Wayne’s overnight bag was sitting on the bar. He pushed it aside and leaned on his arms to get down closer. “You don’t know who I am, anything about me. Why would you say something like that?”
“Well, you’re a queer, aren’t you? Isn’t that what queers do?”
Wayne studied the man’s one-eyed face, his dumb mean expression, one of those nasty drunks Wayne could never understand, why booze turned them bitter, made them want to fight or tear up a place or drive their car into a tree. It had an opposite effect on Wayne, it made him feel warm and witty, able to abide even assholes and mime the tune “My Girl” the way the Temptations did it, with all the moves. But he wasn’t drunk now or anywhere near to feeling good. He said to the mate, “Which one’d you tell me was your glass eye?”
It caused the mate to stare, hesitate, but only a moment. “You don’t know shit, do you? Can’t tell a towboat from a coal hopper, a real eye from one that ain’t.”
“The clear one,” Wayne said, “that isn’t all bloodshot. You lose it in a bar?”
“Boy hit me with a bottle.”
“I can believe it, the kind of mouth you have. I’m surprised you aren’t dead by now.”
“We’re getting to it,” the mate said, “aren’t we?”
Wayne said, “No, we’re there.” He straightened and put his hand on the man’s bony shoulder. “And I’ll tell you where we’re at. You’re gonna quit mouthing off, okay? You don’t, I’ll pound that glass eye into you so hard you’ll be using it to peek out your asshole.” Wayne got a grip on the man’s coat, pulled him straight up and held him there one-handed looking into his good eye. “Is that what you want? Nod or shake your head, but be careful you don’t speak.”