AROUND TEN O’CLOCK, the boat swung into a dreamy turn at the Violet locks and was steaming upstream at three-quarters speed. The band broke into an uptempo version of “Everybody Step” and emptied the tables. When Sam came down the stairs Charlie Duggs was dragging a big young fellow by the collar out toward the forward rail. He broke loose and swung, punching Duggs in the jaw. Charlie’s face rebounded wearing a grin, and he slapped the man openhanded, the percussion cracking above the thundering band, the customer plunging sideways under a table. Sam went over to help but the second mate waved him off.
“I can handle this one. He just wants to dance a new step is all. A waiter came up a minute ago and said things were getting testy downstairs.” He grabbed the man by the ankles and hauled him back out into the music.
On the main deck Sam spotted two old men arguing, their faces crimson, one holding a cane by its bottom, the curved handle rising toward a big Emerson ceiling fan, which jerked it away, and carried it three turns before flinging it across the lounge, onto a table, where it knocked drinks in the laps of an overdressed and tipsy foursome. Sam at once understood several things about a dance steamer: people felt safe getting drunk since there was no proper law on board, nearly everyone was drinking, and any cruise was liable to turn more unstable as the trip wore on.
He stepped in front of two men advancing from their dripping table. “Easy,” he said, holding up his hands. “It was an accident.”
“Oh yeah?” One of them raised a fist, a short fellow with an ice cube rising out of his vest pocket. “Where have you been? These old bastards have been carping back and forth for the past half hour. This was supposed to be an enjoyable ride.”
“We want our money back for the drinks,” the other man said, swaying and then taking an extra step to the side.
“I’ll see that the waiter brings out another bucket of ice and some glasses.”
“What about an apology?” the little man said.
The larger of the two old men came over. His eyes were small and his nose was a huge overripe strawberry. “I’ll take my cane, thank you.”
“Don’t you have anything to say?” the little man snarled.
The old gentleman pursed his mouth, and Sam knew by looking at his face that he was going to say something that would result in the breaking up of a quarter of the wicker furniture in the lounge. “I see,” the old man began, “that you would like for me to make you feel better. You want me to apologize for the actions of an electrical contrivance.”
Here the little man’s friend stepped up. “You don’t have to get smart with us.” He gave the old man a halfhearted shove in the vest.
A tiny, well-dressed, middle-aged gentleman stood up across the room and steadied himself against a plant stand. “You just watch who you’re shoving around,” he chirped. “That’s my father-in-law.”
Two women were flapping ice off their dresses, and one of them picked up the cane and tossed it at the old man, hitting him on the forehead and knocking his glasses off. “You trashy people,” he roared, “ought to be thrown overboard!”
Sam looked around at sixty or so passengers and saw that they were nice people, well dressed and mature, not some unimportant kids he could bully into behaving. He tried to get between everybody at once and found himself in the middle of a jabbering cloud of alcoholic breath. The polite air was turning sour when the son-in-law, who was four tables over, tried to get to the argument by stepping on a wicker-bottom chair, but his foot went through it and he danced three hops and fell onto another couple’s table, his hand getting stuck in a small metal water pitcher. At this point everyone started to laugh, except the son-in-law and the old man, who slowly bent over and felt the floor for his cane and spectacles. Sam called over a waiter to dry the tables and chairs and get everybody reseated and supplied with fresh glasses and ice. The steam whistle blew a warning, followed by a rising, shrill signal from the starboard side as a ferryboat cut its engines only twenty-five feet away, its yellow running lights shining angrily, its boiler’s fire door a blinding orange star traveling sideways in the night. The passengers calmed down, distracted by the fact that the ferry had come out from its landing without waiting for or even seeing the
UPSTAIRS, the band members were running with sweat, thumping out a shimmy number as five hundred dancers stepped and turned in a massive wink of patent leather and sequins, silk ties and hair oil, good New Orleans dancers who knew what to do with a downbeat making the old deck jump. The waiters were skating around the edge of the action, sliding their shoes on the dance wax, delivering sandwiches and mixers to the people at the double layer of tables lining the walls. The expressions of most of the dancers seemed overly happy, and Sam scanned the faces of the band members, who were too busy selling the tune to exhibit any worry, and indeed no one showed a negative thought, caught up in some kind of capsule of delight, at least while the music kept everything in motion. And then he saw a still silhouette sitting at the stern end of the dance deck, and he walked over because her presence contradicted the motion-drunk room. It was Elsie, sitting alone at the last table, her hair wound in pigtails above her ears, wearing a plain dark dress.
“Hi. You on break?”
“In case you don’t know, the staff can’t join in the fun. We’ll be at the dock in ten minutes and as soon as the lights come up, I’m to start stripping the tables.”
She looked tired, and he wanted to say something to cheer her up, but all he said was, “Work you to death, don’t they?”
“Well, let’s just say I need to keep busy.”
“Ted still waiting on ’em upstairs?”
She nodded. “I was waitressing with him but they cut me loose a few minutes ago. It’ll only take a half hour to clear everybody off. This is a pretty mild crowd.”
The whistle moaned out a landing signal and the band began to play “Home, Sweet Home.” Sam felt a tug on his arm and he turned to face a thickset man also wearing a mate’s cap. He introduced himself as Aaron Swaneli, the first mate.
“How’d I miss meeting you?”
“It’s my bidness to lay low,” Swaneli said. “That way I can keep an eye on things, you know?” He made a sideways motion with his head.
“You’re the power man. Got a blackjack on you.”
Swaneli put a hand on Sam’s shoulder and squeezed it. “Look, right now I need you to go topside. The hardlegs up there are smokin’ and all in love this time of night. Walk the rail and look for cigarettes they’ve tossed. Every butt you see, lit or not, put your toe on it and twist three times, okay?”
The lights came up on the last note, and the band began to take down music and pack their instruments. People crowded the stairs, and Sam walked up through them and toured the deck, first the open area, then the cafe, which was hot and nearly empty. He stepped out into the night and looked forward to where Mr. Brandywine then ascended a little filigreed bridge on the hurricane deck. He raised a megaphone and called directions out to a man standing by a steam capstan. The big boat seemed asleep in the water at that point, waiting for some type of decision the current was supposed to make. Finally, Mr. Brandywine turned the megaphone up to the pilothouse’s dark windows. “Mrs. Benton! Give her a nudge.”
A bell jingled in the engine room and two snoring chuffs jetted from the escape pipes as the boat leaned into the wharf and tapped a piling right where a deckhand held a hemp fender against the hull. The fore and aft lines went out and a stop-engine bell rattled as the boat drifted in snug.
It took an hour to clear the last passengers off, a too-jolly batch of overweight young women. Sam did indeed stamp out a dozen lit cigarettes, and also woke up a drunk boy in the men’s toilet and walked him ashore. Several people lingered under the dock lights, staring at the steamer as though they couldn’t quite believe their ride was over. Their faces showed they’d just been exiled back to their ordinary selves, and they didn’t seem to like it one
