OCR Text |
Show RTVER Then, even more than when the days had been green and golden, my love for Rosie burned inside. She was my warmth and comfort and strength. I suppose that before the trip we had as many hassles and insecurities as any young couple, but they fell away before the intensity of our shared experience. We were so close that we could gage our moods by the other's face. At times it seemed that there were no other people in the world, nor did there need to be. In the cold and wet adversity, Rosie was always there, and our love seemed as strong as the great river itself. At last one evening we'd struggled to within twenty miles of New Orleans. There was no kind of sheltered anchorage, so I moored the raft perpendicular to the bank, the stern facing into the wakes of passing ships. As we were finishing our supper, a sleek white freighter came gliding up the river, peeling off long waves of wakes behind her. There was nothing we could do but watch the wild water wash toward us. The first wave buried the nose of the raft in the mud of the bank, and then wave after wave broke over the stern and washed into the cabin, soaking everything we owned. As it got darker the first truly serious mosquitoes we'd encountered on the trip arrived, a whole humming horde come to drink our blood. We smeared ourselves with bug repellant and burned our lantern low and smoky, but these mosquitoes were hungry and determined. When we got into our soggy sleeping bags it seemed that New Orleans was as distant as the moon. We clung to each other till we laughed ourselves to sleep. With first light, I got up and pushed the raft out of the mud and tried to start the engine as we drifted across the river. The mosquitoes went wild after my naked body and the damned engine did nothing at all. When we came to the far shore the raft got caught in an eddy. Rosie climbed down into the water and -103- |