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Show RIVER pears. As we drifted out of summer and into the fall the constant green began to change to the scarlet and yellow of October. On weekdays the sleepy river was quiet, but on weekends the pleasure craft were as numerous as mosquitoes in Arkansas: cabin cruisers, houseboats, and skiffs, usually piloted by drunks, rich and poor. The boaters drove us crazy with their wakes, which were as bad as a towboat's, but the people were generally friendly and curious. We met a young beer-crazed engineer who examined the raft until his face began to twitch. "It can't work," he said, looking at the bluff bow of the Phillip W. Pell. "It defies all the laws of physics: it can't possibly work." One Sunday afternoon just below Burlington we met a rich couple in a Chris Craft who spoke in strange patrician Midwestern accents and invited us aboard for highballs. The lady was sweet and very drunk. She gushed on and on about how much she liked our raft, but for the sake of beauty, we should certainly consider going up the river instead of down. "If s so much more beautiful up the river. Down there" she said, pointing south, "are places like Mississippi and Alabama. Why would anyone want to go to such places?" That was a tough question. Without answering it, we returned to the raft with a good buzz on from the highballs. I was pretty thoroughly blasted and the raft staggered down the river under my drunken steering. We'd set a rendezvous point at a state park that was still some distance away and darkness swallowed us up before we made it. Darkness transformed the river and John Adams warning echoed in my head: "Whatever you do, don't run at night. The river will kill you if you do." The moon wouldn't rise for a couple of hours and after the last light faded away, it was immensely dark. We could have been floating in -69- |