AT CAPE GIRARDEAU the moonlight trip was attended by a civilized tribe of midwesterners who had leased the boat. The dancing was orderly and friendly, and the young people danced as if they’d been taught the steps in school. Sam and Charlie faced no emergencies, and after they had walked around the boat twice, took a break on the boiler deck forward rail and listened to the orchestra. Onstage, Elsie was singing in the spotlight, her alto caressing “When My Baby Smiles at Me.” He watched her through the window, and in her makeup and shiny dress, she looked like a million dollars and sang like a mint.
Charlie had just come back from his father’s funeral and had spent a week settling the small estate. “I tell you, Lucky, the old man didn’t have two nickels to rub together, and his shed was full of the damnedest stuff. It took me two days to haul it out into the yard for the sale. Stove legs, empty shotgun shells, parts to railroad lanterns, a broken plow, and I don’t know what all. I made about ten dollars and had to pay that to get the rest of the junk hauled away.”
Sam leaned back against the rail and let the music pour over him. “What’d he do for a living?”
“Watchman in a foundry. They paid him so little he could draw a week’s pay in coins.” Charlie shook his head. “I got there about five hours before he died. Someone had picked him up in the street, and he was at the clinic two days before anybody in the family knew where the hell he was.”
“It’s good you got to see him before he passed.”
“I don’t know. He was out of his head and cussed me for not send-in’ more money. But I knew it was the sickness talkin’.” A breeze came up, and Charlie snugged his cap and slipped his big hands into his pockets. “At least I had a father. You ever wonder what your old man would’ve been like?”
Sam looked upriver, into the wind. “No.” In fact, he had thought about his father right after he realized that his cousins weren’t his brothers. He’d asked his uncle what he’d been like, but Claude had only shrugged and said it wasn’t time to talk about that. For years, this was the answer he’d gotten: “
Charlie moved a step closer along the rail. “You mean you just didn’t give a damn, or what?”
“I didn’t know what to be curious about.”
“You didn’t even have a picture of him or your mama?”
“There weren’t too many photo studios in Troumal.”
Charlie leaned in. Two young couples were walking past them toward a companionway, the boys lighting up the night with their seersucker suits. “I still can’t believe you’re not curious about who killed them.”
“I’m curious.”
“I mean serious curious. Track ’em down or somethin’. Sic the law on them at least. Damn, you got their name off one of the Skadlocks, didn’t you?”
Sam stepped away from the rail, suddenly angry. “What, you got nobody to fight tonight so you want to fight with me?”
“Calm down, Lucky.”
“I tell you what. When I get finished paying my bills and sending money for my wife and baby, I’ll buy an outfit and load it on a train and track those bastards all over Arkansas for a month. You want me to hire some Pinkertons while I’m at it? Would that make you happy?”
“Look, it’s all right. Forget it.”
“I’ve never been long on vengeance, friend. It’s not exactly in my budget.”
Charlie began to walk off. “Time to check for cigarettes.”
Sam yelled after him. “What am I supposed to do with these people if I find ’em? Write out a bill for memories that never happened? Shoot ’em in the eye? Listen, you ever slap a dog for pissing on your leg? You think the dog understands why you hit him? What’s the use, is what I’m saying.” But Charlie had rounded the deck into darkness, and he found himself enraged and near tears. He made his rounds quickly, dodging passengers and telling himself he was merely tired. He stopped at the rail and watched the moon-glazed river for a long time, then he went up to the cafe for coffee.
Elsie, working even between sets, slammed a cup in front of him as soon as he sat down. “You’re on the floor.”
“Give me a break. I just need five minutes.”
“After the trip tonight, August needs you to go over an arrangement for that newest DeSylva piece he’s been practicing.”
He took a hot swallow. “I don’t know arrangements like Ted did.”
“Well, I thought you might want to do some of his work.” She said this in as cruel a voice as possible. He wondered if she remembered she was talking to a man who’d never even had a father.
“And tomorrow, before you play for the two o’clock crowd, can you watch Lily?”
He shook his head no, but said, “Sure.”
“Even
He went back to his cabin and dug out Charlie’s new bottle of Canadian whiskey and sat with the door open, looking out into the passing dark. He’d rescued the child, but so far as Elsie was concerned, he’d brought only part of her back. “Bits and pieces of all of us fall away,” he said aloud, staring out into the dark, waiting for a light, onshore or waterborne, it didn’t matter. But no light passed his door.
THE NEXT DAY he was at the piano setting up for the two o’clock trip. A few Presbyterians were crossing the gangplank dressed in their snappy summer clothes. Elsie appeared at the treble side of the piano and thrust Lily’s hand toward him. “Here. I’ll be back in an hour.”
He lifted her onto the bench and continued practicing “’N’ Everything.” She was looking at her sooty doll as if it were diseased.
“That your favorite dolly?”
She put out her bottom lip. “I had some nice ones with real china faces.”
“Why, you can have just as much fun with a cheap doll,” he said, instantly sorry that he’d said anything at all. “What’s her name?”
“I don’t know.” She slid next to him on the bench and watched his hands play through the Broadway tune popular a few years before. The rhythm was tricky, a sort of semi-ragtime experiment. Lily began to hum.
“You know this one?”
She quietly sang the last verse along with his playing, forgetting the second-to-last line.
“You’re not interested? You’d sound good with a band behind you, I bet.”
“Maybe,” she began, “when my fingers get long, I can play the piano.”
“But you can sing right now.” He finished the piece, took up a pencil, and made a few marks on the music, thinking how sooner or later everybody has to sing for their supper. He looked down at Lily’s unbrushed hair and the drooping rickrack bow. “You want me to play something?”
She shook her head.
“Anything you want to ask me?”
She put a thumb over one of the doll’s eyes. “Why are the rooms on this boat so small?”
“It’s a boat, honey, and boats have small rooms. You won’t be on one forever.”
She put a thumb over the doll’s other eye. “That’s good,” she said, her voice shaking.
After one glance at her face, he began playing “Kitty Kat Rag” and jostling her on the piano bench. “Come on and clap.” She let her doll slip to the floor but didn’t move, only watched his fingers, and at the turn she put up her right hand and began to insert grace notes an octave above where he was playing, in time and matching the melody. In the repeat she put in more notes, guessing right where he was going. Something was happening, but he wasn’t sure what. She was staying with him now, bouncing on the bench.
