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Show RFVER "No," I said. "I'm not a hippie." "Where ya from?" "From California." "You from Haight-Ashbury or whatever that place is?" "Worse," I said. "I'm from Santa Cruz." I explained about the raft. "I'm jealous," said the healthy drunk. "Now's the time to do it," said his companion. Hannibal was so depressing that we left the next afternoon and tied up behind Shuck's Island, Jackson's Island in Huckleberry Finn. The island was still wild and empty, a lot more like Huck Finn country than the tourist trap that Hannibal had become. We grew more unwashed, unbrushed, and undressed as we drifted into the Upper South. It was hard to be harried or hurried on a raft that went thirty miles on a good day. On the door of the cabin I painted a quote from Huck Finn: "Other places do seem cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft." That was it: free and easy and comfortable. Above St. Louis we passed through the Chain of Rocks canal and locked through Lock 27 at the last dam on the river. When the river broke loose of the dam it suddenly came alive. The current, which had been sluggish and slow, suddenly swept forward, now swollen by the Missouri River, unbound and set free. The constant, powerful, silent, gliding current was as invisible as the wind but just as alive. Below its confluence with the River of the West, the Mississippi was transformed, the surface marked with enormous sucks and boils, the current bucking like a newborn colt, a true river at last. The current caught the raft and -78- |