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Show RIVER around the point to my boat and began looking it over. I suggested that we take a ride. Thurmond refused to have anything to do with it, but I coaxed his brothers into the boat and he climbed in too. I rowed upstream in the quiet water close to shore toward a steel highway bridge spanning the Mississippi. Then I let Thurmond and Gabe take the oars. "You going to row this boat down to New Orleans?" asked Thurmond. "No, I'm just going down to Natchez or Baton Rouge." "How far's that?" "Seven, eight hundred miles." "Jesssusss...." Thurmond worked his face up into an expression of profound contempt and disbelief. "What you want to do that for? Why don't you just get a car and drive there?" "If d cost more money than I've got and if d be over too soon. Besides, I want to see the river. Like, look, wouldn't you like to see whaf s down this river?" "Shee-it," said Thurmond. "Youah crazy." He dismissed me completely. I tried to explain to him all the advantages of drifting: no gas, no engines, no breakdowns, no noise, very cheap. I laid it on thick, trying to make it sound as romantic as possible. "I get out there in the current and drift along at four or five miles an hour, free and easy and comfortable, the scenery sliding by..." "Where do you sleep at night? You sleep in motels?" "I camp out." "Don't you get wet when it rains?" "I get wet when it rains," I admitted. "Shee-it," sneered Thurmond. "You are crazy. Ain't you even got the sense to be scairt of getting drowned?" -27- |