Mississippi Roll

  Nurassyl pulled up Roger’s eye patch, touching the burning lid of his eye. Roger blinked and the contact fell out. Nurassyl brushed it aside like an inconsequential bit of black jelly, then put his arms around Roger’s neck and hugged him, and everything was all right.

  “Lord almighty,” proclaimed Ms. Potts, “saved by the Devil and Br’er Fox. You do work in strange and wondrous ways.…”

  Nurassyl went and hugged her as well.

  “And you, dear child,” she said, hugging the joker boy.

  Roger reached up and felt his horns. They felt longer and slightly sharper than usual.

  He reached into his jacket and pulled out the silver hand mirror, checking. They were longer and sharper, and his left eye, despite having lost the contact, was still jet-black.

  He’d drawn his card. He’d drawn his card and lived.

  A nightingale’s voice trilled and Lenore said, “Oh, Roger, are you all right?”

  “Fine, I think.”

  Bibigul embraced him, trilling. “Did you mean what you said?” asked Lenore. “Do you truly want to marry me?”

  “Yeah,” Roger said, “I think so. But we’re going to have to get a better marriage contract.” He picked up the scroll, which was once again Sam’s calligraphic masterpiece, fiddle-playing hellcats and all.

  The bottom shimmered for a moment, the spot where Johnny’s signature was written in disappearing reappearing ink. The name that appeared there in blood red letters, however, was Shirley, then just as quickly it faded away.

  Roger rolled up the contract, tucking it back into his jacket, while Bibigul warbled happily.

  “I know who can marry us!” cried Lenore. “Captain Leathers! Would it not be perfect?”

  “Yeah,” Roger said uncertainly. “Perfect.”

  In the Shadow of Tall Stacks

  Part 6

  ROGER ASKED WILBUR IF he would marry them, but Wilbur refused. After all, what marriage bureau would be willing to accept the signature of a dead man on a really soggy marriage license? “No,” he told them flatly. “I’m very flattered you’d ask, but you really need to find someone else to marry you. Why not talk to Captain Montaigne?”

  Captain Montaigne informed Roger and Bibigul that, despite persistent rumors to the contrary, a boat’s captain can’t legally marry anyone, and that they needed to find a clergyman or a justice of the peace.

  Which is what they did: when they stopped at Cape Girardeau, Roger and Bibi, accompanied by Wild Fox and Sylvia, went ashore to the local Recorder of Deeds and applied for a marriage license, with Wild Fox providing the required identification for Bibigul via illusion; later, a minister was brought on board and the marriage performed.

  The reception took place in the Bayou Lounge. Wilbur stayed for a while in the lounge for the celebration, even if drinking or eating cake was no longer possible for him. He stayed mostly in the corners (remaining invisible since the Dead Report crew was also there), watching the people dancing and singing and Roger performing impromptu magic as Lenore fluttered around both him and Bibi.

  Wilbur found himself enjoying the celebration and the memories it dredged up in him.

  His own marriage to Eleanor, as well as the reception they’d had afterward, had been more traditional and elaborate, which made him, honestly, rather uncomfortable, though Eleanor had enjoyed her role as the lovely bride. The hall her parents had rented in Charleston had been decorated as a steamboat, with fluted steam stacks holding flowers as the centerpieces for the table and a cake in the shape of the Natchez—the hull of which had already been laid. The Hamiltonian’s large oak and steel wheel, newly purchased by Wilbur for the Natchez, stood on a frame near the head table (surrounded by the smaller cousins of the two families, who were pretending to “steer” the hall and making loud steam-whistle noises). A small orchestra played swing and classic songs on the stage, even—rather wincingly, in Wilbur’s opinion—attempting some New Orleans jazz.

  Wilbur sat next to Eleanor, holding on to her hand in the midst of the chaotic revelry. He knew few of the people there; the majority of those at the reception were Eleanor’s relatives, as his parents were dead, he’d been an only child, and his relatives lived far from the East Coast and had declined to attend. Eleanor seemed to have sensed his unease—she had leaned over to him, placing her head on his shoulder. “Just be patient, dearest,” she said. “We’ll leave as soon as we can, and after that, I’ll always be with you. We can start our own lives and live as we want to live.”

  Wilbur had squeezed her hand tightly, bending his head down to kiss her as people tapped their glasses with their silverware and laughed.

  As they were doing now. Wilbur shook off the memory to see Roger and Bibi kissing, and he smiled as he had then.

  But things were less joyful when he visited the remaining refugees again early the next morning as the Natchez was steaming on toward St. Louis.

  The refugees, after Agent Jones’s blatant entry into their cabin, were increasingly nervous about being discovered and deported, and, through Jyrgal, complaining loudly to JoHanna. Wilbur popped in in the midst of one such conversation. “… understand your concerns, but I assure you that you’re safer here than anywhere else.”

  A mingled, incomprehensible babble of Kazakh and Russian and poor English answered her statement (very little of it comprehensible to Wilbur despite the smattering of Kazakh he’d picked up from Jyrgal and Nurassyl). Erzhan was the loudest among the protesters, slapping his beaver’s tail on the floor for emphasis, and shouting something in Kazakh that Wilbur couldn’t understand and Jyrgal declined to translate.

  “Miss Potts,” Jyrgal said finally in his heavily accented English, his mittened hands waving to quiet the uproar of the others, “we have been nearly discovered by ICE agents twice now. That has us all worried, as you can see. Not me, you understand, but some of the others are wondering if—rather than leaving in twos and threes where you’ve made arrangements—if it wouldn’t be better for all of us to leave the boat and take our chances on our own as a group. Maybe some of us could, perhaps, simply disappear in the joker section of your big cities. We don’t wish to end up imprisoned on Rathlin Island with the others.”

  JoHanna was already shaking her head well before he’d finished. “The plans have been made with the JADL, and they’re still the best path to follow. The authorities can’t easily reach you in the sanctuary cities, and half of you are already safe. All of you will be safe if you just continue to follow the JADL’s directions. Please, Jyrgal, you have to convince them.”

  Jyrgal lifted a shoulder. “I will try,” he said, and again: “I will try.”

  “Please do your best, then,” JoHanna told him, her hands on her wide hips. “It’s in all of our interests to keep you from being caught, after all.” She glared around the room, looking in the eyes of each of the refugees and pausing at Erzhan for a longing stare before heaving a sigh and leaving the room.

  Wilbur remained behind. He took in enough steam to become easily visible and to make his voice audible. “Keşiriñiz,” he said, looking at all of them, but especially Jyrgal, Nurassyl, and Erzhan. I’m sorry. “I wish I’d learned enough to speak to you in your own language, but Jyrgal will tell you what I’m saying.” He paused. “JoHanna—Ms. Potts—is right. You will all be safest if you stay here. Believe me, I understand wanting desperately to get off this boat—better than any of you might believe. I especially understand how frightened some of you are after what happened with that ICE woman. But I assure you that you have people watching over you here, and they … we … only have your best interests at heart. We want you all to find a safe place, and we’ll do all we can to make that happen. I promise you that.”

  The words sounded like platitudes and empty promises, but there was nothing more he could say. He looked around as Jyrgal finished translating, trying to read in their faces whether they believed him or not, and not seeing anything that convinced him. Erzhan, especially, seemed unconvinced. Behind the jo
ker’s back, he could see Aiman and Tazhibai whispering to each other.

  But this was all Wilbur could do to settle them; he was afraid words of hope and promises might not be enough.

  For anyone. For anything.

  “Your shift over?” Wilbur heard Roger Ravenstone say to Jack, the bartender. Roger and Bibi were at the rail just outside the doors of the Bayou Lounge with Jack as Wilbur was passing by, unseen.

  The Natchez had docked in St. Louis near the Arch that afternoon; cargo destined for the city had been off-loaded—as had a quartet of the Kazakh jokers, since St. Louis was one of the sanctuary cities in which the JADL had contacts. Several of the passengers had signed on to travel only this far, leaving the boat while new passengers came aboard who were going onto the Tall Stacks festival. Many of the passengers staying with the boat took the opportunity to do some sightseeing, while curious onlookers at the riverfront paid their money to tour the boat—that last group, at just past eight thirty P.M. now, had all been escorted off the boat.

  It had been a chaotic day.

  “Soon,” the elderly Cajun said to Roger. “Just on break right now. I’m thinking about checking out Laclede’s Landing. Mebbe.” Jack looked toward the sky. Dark thunderheads were rising in the west against high clouds still illuminated by the just-set sun. They could hear thunder grumbling in the distance. “Or mebbe not,” Jack added. “It s’posed to rain?”

  Roger pulled out his smartphone and touched the weather app. “Yep. Looks like it. There’s a severe thunderstorm warning here until midnight. Check out the radar—that looks ugly to me.”

  Jack glanced at the phone Roger held out, but Wilbur doubted the man really understood what he was looking at. For that matter, neither did Wilbur; the red and yellow blotches looked like a bad abstract painting. At the time he’d last cared much about the weather, radar was still in its infancy and used to track airplanes and ships, not storms. With a showy wave of his free hand and a grin, Roger made it appear that his phone had simply disappeared from the hand in which he’d been holding it, displayed his empty hands dramatically, then plucked the phone from Jack’s bar jacket pocket. “Well,” he said to Jack, “Bibi and I got another set to do. We’d better get to it. You have a good night whatever you end up doing with it, Jack. C’mon, love.”

  He touched Bibigul’s arm and the two went back into the lounge hand in hand. Jack stayed at the rail, looking out at St. Louis, the Arch, and the onrushing storm. Wilbur thought of staying with Jack for a bit and just watching the storm front come in, already trailing a gray sheet of rain underneath its clouds. Instead, he chose to stay invisible and just move on. The threatening weather seemed to fit his mood at the moment, with the coming storm a metaphor for his inability to come up with a solution to his and his steamboat’s apparently intertwined fates or his inability to calm the fears of the remaining refugees.

  Steamless and powerless. Tied down and stuck. Forever. It’s coming on fast, that fate.… And who knows if that Agent Jones will come back. I wasn’t there to help them when she showed up.…

  Doubts and guilt whirled in an uneasy mix in his head.

  Wilbur continued around the boiler deck toward the bow of the Natchez. The promenade area was deserted, the passengers either in the city, in their cabins, or in the lounge. He went to Jeremiah’s cabin and found the old pilot with fountain pen in hand, writing another letter. His desk lamp gleamed off his balding, age-spotted scalp. Wilbur glanced over the man’s shoulder: Dear Mr. McDonough, I’m writing to you as I understand McDonough Marine Services has need of an experienced river and barge pilot …

  “Any luck?” Wilbur said, and Jeremiah nearly dropped the fountain pen at the sound of his voice. The old man craned his head over his shoulder, one white eyebrow lifting on his dark, wrinkled face.

  “That just ain’t right, sneaking up on an old man without so much as a ‘hey.’ You could give someone a heart attack.” Jeremiah capped the fountain pen and swiveled his chair around. His head tilted appraisingly. “You look troubled, Wilbur.”

  “I guess … I guess I’m just feeling sorry for myself tonight.”

  Jeremiah looked back at the letter, then at Wilbur, shaking his head slowly. “I kin understand that with all that’s goin’ on. There’s gotta be a way out for you somehow, Wilbur. I can’t imagine but that your kind of existence ain’t been nothing but awful.”

  Wilbur shook his head. “Awful? Not really. Awful was when I lost Eleanor and our child; that’s a terrible hole I can’t ever fill. But past that…? There have been bad times and despair since, plenty of it, but I’ve also had some good to leaven it. I made friends over the decades, friends like you. I have family here.” He saw Jeremiah grin slowly at that. “I’ve enjoyed the trips up and down the rivers and seeing the slow changes in the landscape, even though I’ve wanted often enough to be able to get off at the towns and cities and explore. But awful? No. It was just … life. My life. It’s only now, with the thoughts of my poor Natchez being no longer a living boat…” And me stuck on it. Steamless. Powerless. Just an empty ghost with nothing but memories.

  “Sometimes what you have to do for family, what you have to do to achieve what you want, is to refuse to give up on them, to change whatever needs to be changed and make whatever sacrifices are necessary.” Eleanor’s words.

  Am I willing to do that? Wilbur asked himself. And the answer that came back was a resounding yes. He had changed over the decades. He’d had thoughts and emotions and experiences he’d never imagined in his life. If he no longer had Eleanor, he still had friends, and he still had his boat.

  He would find a way. He’d make whatever sacrifice he needed to make.

  He was suddenly no longer sad. Just angry and determined.

  Lightning flashed to the west. A rumble of deep thunder answered.

  “Sorry, Jeremiah,” he said. “I’m working on things. I promise. Maybe we can make it so you won’t need to be writing letters like that.”

  Under the Arch

  by David D. Levine

  JACK THE BARTENDER LEANED on the promenade rail, looking forward and up at the Gateway Arch as the Natchez steamed into St. Louis just after dawn. From river level the Arch seemed impossibly tall and impossibly clean, gleaming in the light of the rising sun as it swept up, up, up from the riverbank into a blue sky dotted with a few puffy clouds, then down again in a majestic arc. Diminishing in size as it rose, it seemed even taller than it was.

  Gateway to the West, he thought; gateway to freedom for the Kazakhs, he hoped. It was about the midpoint of their journey to Cincinnati, and their most northerly port before Cincinnati itself. The trip so far had been much more turbulent than he’d expected, and he really hoped that this gleaming gateway was an omen of smoother sailing going forward.

  Somehow, though, he doubted it.

  St. Louis, important though it was in Mississippi River history, was an unfortunate detour for Jack and his remaining Kazakh charges. After this stop they would head back down the Mississippi to the confluence of the Ohio River, which they had passed in the night some days ago, then take the Ohio fork toward Cincinnati and the Tall Stacks, where the last of the jokers would depart.

  He would miss them. Some more than others, to be sure, and he would not miss the hassles, the arguments, the language barrier, and the moments of near-panic. But this litter of lost puppies he’d wound up taking on, almost against his will, had turned out to be as much of a joy as a burden in many ways. Little Sezim, always clutching that filthy little doll, melted Jack’s weathered heart, and Nurassyl, the “ghost boy,” had such compassion for others that he made everyone want to help him. And some of the others appealed in other ways.…

  Jack shook his head. No. Even if his interest were reciprocated—and why would anyone, even a misshapen Kazakh joker, be interested in an ugly old Cajun bartender?—he had learned enough about Kazakh culture’s attitude toward gays to know that he didn’t have a prayer it would lead to anything.

  He sighe
d. He’d been single for … how long now? Twelve years, at least. You’d think he’d be used to the idea by now, and at seventy-nine he had few years and fewer prospects remaining. But watching Ravenstone and Bibi’s budding romance, as well as Tazh and Aiman’s puppy love, reminded him of what he was missing, and filled his heart with despair of ever finding someone to call his own.

  Natchez’s whistle blew then, a shrill blast that made the rail beneath Jack’s crossed arms vibrate, and it was answered by a foghorn call from shore. The dock where they would be berthing for their three-day stay in St. Louis lay waiting, and Jack had work to do.

  The rest of the morning was spent shifting luggage, answering questions from their new passengers, helping to haul carts of sheets and towels to the laundry, and preparing the bar for lunch. Then came the lunch rush, which kept him busy serving drinks, snacks, and sandwiches to customers old and new. One of the former was Leo Storgman, whose tipple of choice was a boilermaker. He had been a regular since New Orleans, and they had chatted frequently during slow moments; they actually had quite a bit in common.

  “How long you been retired?” Storgman asked Jack as he sliced limes.

  Jack had to think for a moment. “I took early retirement back in … ninety-six. Over twenty years. Jesus, where does the time go?” He shook his head. “You?”

  “2011.”

  “You were a cop, right?”

  “Detective. Forty-two years on the force.” Storgman raised his glass in salute, then drained it. “Anyway … do you have any kind of handle on that piece-of-shit website they make us use for our pensions?”

  Jack smiled sadly. “What I don’t know about computers would fill a book.”

  “Damn.” Storgman tapped his glass, and Jack refilled it. “The world just keeps moving faster and faster.”

  “Don’t I know it.”