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Show RIVER songs together. Often the long hours were slow and unchanging enough to be boring, but the simple pace of the days-rising with the sun, drifting through the day and going to bed when it got dark-agreed with both of us. That afternoon a wake hit us broadside and we heard a crash from the cabin below. Rosie went down to survey the damage and found our Coleman stove lying in pieces on the deck-so much for modern conveniences. Rosie tried to put it back together and, failing that, decided to see if she could make the contraption work by liberally dousing it with fuel. Soon there was smoke wafting its way up to me and I thought, "God, she's set the raft on fire!" "Don't worry," she called up. "The fire extinguisher works fine!" By late afternoon we'd had our best run of the trip, seventy-five miles, and we'd made it to the bayou that led up to Greenville, Mississippi. Greenville had been cut off forty years before when the Mississippi changed its course and the town was now six miles up a backwater. We wanted to go into town to get some supplies and replace our stove parts, but the current was against us. We landed and began walking through the tangled forest that covered the bank. After a couple of miles we came across a compound of trailers that could have been the modern home of the Snopes clan. The trailers were decorated in early hound dog and the residents told us it was still three miles to town. We gave up on Greenville and returned to the raft. We rounded out of the inlet and bought some necessities at a boat store at the mouth of the bayou. We pulled out into the channel and dropped below a sandbar where we made camp. The sun was almost down and there was no good place to build a fire, so Rosie made up an old reliable, tuna sandwiches, for dinner. We sat in the cabin and read for a while by the light of our kerosene -97- |