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Show RTVER XII. ALL THE RIVERS RUN INTO THE SEA The boat store had pretty much emptied when Olinda Chotin steamed away and the frantic activity ceased altogether. There were three guys left killing time around a red-hot TV set: a college kid named Lane who watched the boat store at night; an old Cajun named Dupuis who ran a ferry service out to the ships anchored in the roadstead; and a young Cajun named Jean who was just hanging out. We talked about the river and towboats. Jean was a towboat that fouled a snag and began taking on water: his father, the pilot, took the boat into shallow water and they all stood in the pilot house while the lower decks sank and the towboat settled into the mud. In a thick dialect that was mostly French except for the obscenities, Dupuis told stories about running whores out to the ships. The TV set periodically went haywire and Jean would beat on it till it straightened out. As the evening wore on and the stories got crazier, the TV got worse and so took quite a pounding, till the frustrated crazy old Cajun kicked it, killing it stone dead. The boat store was built on a worn-out barge moored next to the cobblestones of the Baton Rouge waterfront. An oily stretch of water separated the barge and the shore, and Lane and I crossed the gangplank and smoked a reefer. Lane told me the story of the woman who wanted to die. He'd been working late on Saturday night when a drunk black woman had crossed the gangplank yelling, "I'm gonna kill myself, I'm gonna kill myself!" Lane and Dupuis looked out of the store to see her leap into the backwater. The two or three feet of stagnant, dirty water succeeded in getting her wet but did not drown her at all. Lane and the Cajun dragged her out of the water and onto -219- |