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Show RTVER collapsed onto the couch. My head was still spinning. "I'm alive," I thought. "I'm alive." The old man stepped out of the cabin and left me alone. A young guy with long hair came in, clutching something in his hand. "Take this," he said. "The cook found it in your pants. Get rid of it. We don't want you to get in any trouble." He handed me a baggie of marijuana. "Throw this in the river," he said. I took the baggie and hauled myself out of the cabin. The sight of the rushing river scared the hell out of me. I threw the seeds in the flood and then vomited up buckets of bloody Mississippi River water. The towboat had been backing water and now she tied her load of barges to a soybean silo dock. The towboat came about and turned up river toward Helena. The pilot-Captain Joseph V. Gale, the man who'd talked to me on deck- returned and started asking me questions. He asked if I wanted to go to a hospital or at least go ashore and have a doctor look me over. I said no. Though my head had that expansive feeling a mule must get after being hit on the head with a two-by-four, I was not banged up except for some lacerations on my back and legs. I was in no pain. I did not want to hang up a whole towboat and crew just so some doctor could tell me I was all right. And lucky to be alive. The towboat was Olinda Chotin out of Baton Rouge. Captain Gale was a big man in his sixties. He had a balding head fringed with white hair. He'd worked towboats all his life and he was a legend on the river. Gale had been at the helm when I was run over and almost seemed more shook up than I was. Afraid it would make trouble for him, I told him it was my own damn fault and none of his. This didn't calm him down much. -211- |