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Show RIVER Arkansas and Mississippi, so forsaken by humanity that they are still the province of black bear, bob cat, deer, and possum, looked beautiful. I was falling in love again with the South. I'd resolved to get a job as a deckhand on a towboat. Working on the river would give me a new understanding of it, a familiarity that a casual tourist like myself could never hope to gain. I realized that I knew practically nothing about the river and it seemed it would take years to understand the Old Man well enough to capture the river's great unceasing motion, its terrible beauty, its thousand changes, its moods, and its timelessness. Working with men who had known the river for years, living next to it for weeks and months, seeing it through all its seasons, maybe then I could truly write about the Mississippi. Despite the number of towboats we met on the river, I couldn't take my eyes off one when it rolled by. The largest and newest boats were all spit and polish with new paint and gold lettered name plates, while the older boats were as unpretentious as ancient hobos. At times I'd carry on pantomimed conversations with the crews: one deckhand would see me and he'd call his buddies out of the cabin and we'd sign back and forth across the water while they laughed at the fool in the rowboat. Once a pilot used his loudhailer to order me out of the channel. It was in a particularly wide part of the river where the only place the current was worth a damn was in the channel. I figured it wasn't his business, and besides, I was keeping my eyes open. When he saw that I was ignoring him he hailed me again, "Get out of the channel," his disembodied voice so mechanical that it sounded like the towboat was talking. I got pissed off. I may have been the entire crew and cook besides of my boat, but I was also captain. Just because his craft was -192- |